Death & Co Aims to Build a Bar-First Hotel Brand
Photo Credit: The bar at the Municipal Grand hotel in Savannah. Midnight Auteur / Kelly Calvillo
Skift Take
Death & Co., the cocktail establishment that helped ignite America's craft-cocktail renaissance, is rolling out a hotel brand. The goal is to make the bar the heart of the hotel, not just an afterthought.
Most hotel bars are an afterthought rather than the main attraction. Cult cocktail brand Death & Co. aims to flip that script by building hotels around bars instead of the reverse.
Death & Co. has teamed up with developer Ryan Diggins, who brought them in as the anchor bar at Denver’s 50-room The Ramble Hotel in 2018, to launch a boutique hotel brand called Midnight Auteur.
The brand's first property, the 44-room Municipal Grand, opened in July inside a converted 1960s bank in Savannah, Georgia.
“Without the locals, we’re just a hotel, and hotels are kind of boring to us,” said co-founder Ryan Diggins. “That doesn't excite us. We're in all the other stuff, and then wrap the rooms around it.”
A Cocktail Bar With Guest Rooms UpstairsAt Municipal Grand, the lobby is the main attraction. A semicircular cocktail bar anchors the space, drawing in locals for morning coffee, late-night cocktails, or at times in between. There
