Sean Feeney

I want to be an owner of a basketball team.

I want to think about how to stream music.

I want to get into liquor.

And instead of taking fees to be a sponsor, how do I own brands?

And I got extremely inspired by that.

I started looking at Michael Jordan, how he did things differently with Nike, the deal that he made.

And then looked at LeBron James and how he's done it differently than Michael at an early age.

And I thought about our brand like that.

How can we grow this brand in our authentic way that is true to us and not like everyone else always has done it?

And to us, it was never just restaurants.

There was something about our brand that people loved.

And we were an Italian restaurant, just like Rao's, just like Carbone.

Very popular, hard to get into.

Serving very similar food, but very different brands.

I think about that because I think they can be grown differently.

And especially in this day where the potential around media and content, the potential to put the pen and the microphone and the camera in your hand and the pen out of it is extremely exciting to think about around hospitality brands.

And it's an exciting time to be in an industry that creates experiences that everybody desperately wants.

And those experiences can be created in person inside of four walls.

They can be created outside of those four walls, whether that's your home on an island.

in a villa in Italy or on a screen?