THE INSIDERS-ONLY CULINARY TREND SWEEPING THE NATION ARRIVES IN NAPLES

Private wining-and-dining clubs begin to pop up in Naples, with beyond-exclusive experiences.

BY DOROTHEA HUNTER SONNE | FEBRUARY 1, 2023

It’s 7 p.m. on a Friday. Imagine strolling casually to the hottest new bar in town, friends smiling at you and greeting you by name as you pass their tables. The bartender slips you a pour of the latest Oregon pinot because he knows it’s your favorite; he reminds you that later a jazz trio will be playing on the patio and that in just a few minutes there’s an oyster tasting in an adjoining room. It doesn’t matter you left your wallet on your kitchen counter because your dues (for the private dining club) are prepaid for the year.

This is the scene Rebecca Maddox, the grande dame developer of two of Bayshore Drive’s biggest draws (Celebration Park and Three60 Market), envisions for her new establishment, opening soon. It’s a giant complex of glass structures, designed by architect David Corban in an airy coastal California style that will be home to both its showpiece The Maddox, a private wine club, and Rebecca’s Wine Bar & Market, open to the public. The Maddox’s dues-paying members have access to a 17,000-square-foot zone with a private bar and lounge at the center, with tasting rooms around it, plus an outdoor stage. There’s also a full social calendar with tastings, live music and cooking classes. Naples is home to so many country clubs that if you marked them on a map, it’d start to look like a Seurat, but a members-only, wine-focused clubhouse at this scale? That’s a first.

The venue is in line with a broader national trend toward privacy in the post-COVID era. ZZ’s Club in Miami, a contemporary Japanese restaurant and lounge, is the first private resto-club from Major Food Group (the founders of the sublime Dirty French, among others, in New York City), and it has a waitlist in the thousands. It has been so successful, they are redeveloping the former home of The Tavern in Hudson Yards to be the second ZZ’s Club with a Japanese restaurant, as well as the first private Carbone, one of their flagship eateries. And in Palm Beach, a resto-club opened last season: Carriage House is so shrouded in mystery you need a code to access its website. From reservations-only cocktail bars, like The Wells in D.C., to members-only co-working (-and-playing) spaces, such as the global chain of Soho Houses and Philadelphia’s Fitler Club (where James Beard Award-winning chef Marc Vetri was the culinary advisor), there is high demand for smaller crowds and meaningful encounters.

Nowhere needs that crowd-control more than Naples, and Florida in general, which has seen an influx of new residents over the past few years. In North Naples, another high-profile members-only endeavor debuts soon: Butcher Private. It’s an upscale steakhouse in the former Agave space on Vanderbilt Beach Road, as initially planned, but at the urging of top clients from their original restaurant (seafood bastion Sails), the owners decided to take it private. Only card-carrying members can venture past the 9-foot-tall, wrought-iron doors. The service is so personalized that they dry-age steaks for each guest to their exact number of preferred days in the dining room’s centerpiece, a meat locker lined with Himalayan salt. Down the street from Sails, Cameron Mitchell is working on Prime Social. The restaurateur recently announced that his new locale will have a members-only component, when it debuts above Chops City Grill as Fifth Avenue South’s first rooftop restaurant.

Besides exclusivity and the perks that come with it (getting a table in peak hours, having the servers remember your preferences, down to what type of ice you want in your favorite cocktail), a huge motivating factor for people to seek out any type of private club is the opportunity to meet other like-minded individuals. One of Rebecca’s leading drivers was what she saw as a yearning for connectivity among potential members—a place to belong, especially for the town’s new residents. She decided to cap The Maddox at 300 two-person memberships because she envisions people will treat it like their home away from home, drifting in and out for morning lattes and reading the paper, then popping by for an afternoon tasting of French wines and cheeses, and again after dinner for a round of tequila and live music. “We are not looking for people who say, ‘I want to belong,’ but never show up. I spend between two and three hours with each couple who expresses interest in joining. I’m looking for people who enjoy other people. I can build the best building in the world, but it’s about the people who are in it. There’s going to be a lot of social interaction—canasta, singing, dancing. I’m curating a club for people who respect and love and enjoy one another,” Rebecca says.

Rebecca is forthcoming with her goals and requirements for membership to her private dining club—annual dues are $15,000 with tax and a 20 percent service fee. And yes, her unbeatably low $3.60 markup that she established at Three60Market will apply to all bottles purchased, even if you’re itching for Opus One.

Meanwhile, Butcher’s stellar duo, partners in work and life, Corinne Ryan and Veljko Pavicevic, discreetly shy away from talking exact numbers. What they will say is that their private dining club has different levels of membership. “We wanted the opportunity to elevate the experience even further than what we can offer at Sails. We really want to get to know our guests, their needs and their likes,” Corinne says, noting every square inch of wall will be lined with temperature-controlled wine storage units, with an excess of 150 lockers available to members. Corinne also stresses how a dependably smaller audience allows service to be completely thorough. “It’s difficult for restaurants, even the best, to keep the quality consistently high with a large number of guests dining in season. Butcher Private takes away that variable.”

The recipe for success for any club is privacy (ample closed-off spaces for wheeling and dealing) as well as perks (like storing your Naples Winter Wine Festival loot on premise). Corinne is also excited to flex her Rolodex for the benefit of her loyal guests. Before opening restaurants, she spent two decades trading meat and seafood internationally. (Veljko’s nickname for her since the days they began dating is “the Butcher.”) Her relationships have led to her procuring some of the newest and, dare we say, most luxurious protein on the market, like the new line of English-bred cattle out of Australia, Portoro, which is not currently available anywhere else in the United States. They’ll also have the exceedingly rare Moreton bay bugs (think of them as mini, juicy Australian lobsters), as well as the 100 percent grass-fed Little Joe beef. They envision having steak tastings where guests can compare different breeds and cuts, and guided wine seminars in the club’s library room, which has a direct video connection to vintners around the world. Tiny details catch discerning eyes: All the private dining club chairs and booths are upholstered in navy leather and stitched with the same diamond pattern featured in new Rolls Royce and Bentley vehicles. Blue Coyote Supper Club in Fort Myers, which has been going strong since 2002, proves that a private dining club restaurant model without extras like golf or beach access can work in Southwest Florida. Founder Mitch Schwenke was inspired to keep it going after the University Club in Fort Myers closed in 2009. He keeps his yearly dues low (less than $1,000) to create a more casual—but still clubby— environment. It’s also a simpler membership, limited only to dinner reservations (there are no reciprocals with other clubs). Mitch says it is a model that works well for the local business community, and guaranteed seating has proven to be a big enough draw for people. “Any restaurant requires good food, good ambiance, and good service, but for a private dining club, people also have to feel like it’s a place where they belong, where they can hang their hat,” Mitch says. “A key to that is a great staff. Many of ours have been there for six to 10 years, and the members get to know them and vice versa. We attract great servers because we have a nice clientele, with a good check average and a good schedule.”

His partner who manages the day-to-day operations, Corey Swarthout, works the room every night. Corey also takes pride in curating a unique wine list for members that’s upward of 70 percent small-production, boutique California reds, keeping guests excited to come back and try more. At its heart, Blue Coyote is a place where everyone knows your name, and there’s a small pool of dues-paying members vying for a seat at the tables in season.

All private clubs, whether they’re in the business of feeding people or providing tennis facilities, aim for the same. They foster a sense of community that stems from the members’ shared passions—in this case, sensational wining and dining. They’ll become friends soon enough—with some pretty stellar benefits.

Members-Only Mania: Why Are More Private Clubs Popping Up in New York?

Some people belong to multiple private clubs that have emerged to fill physical and emotional voids. Others In a 115-year-old ferry terminal in New York’s financial district, an abundance of excess now exists. Walls lined with Loro Piana cashmere, Brooklyn Bridge views, a wellness center, a jazz bar — all of it can be yours for $3,900 annually (or just $2,500, if you’re under 30). Since it opened in 2021, Casa Cipriani has become one of the city’s buzziest private clubs.

If you can get in, there are many rules on how to behave. No photos are allowed in the “living room” — last year, some members were reportedly ousted after guests snapped pictures of Taylor Swift with Matty Healy. And there’s a dress code — jeans are allowed, so long as they have “no rips.”

Private clubs have long shaped the fabric of New York social life. Many of them formed during the Gilded Age, meticulously designed to be showstoppers before Manhattan’s skyscrapers surrounded them. Some of the original clubs still exist, sitting on prime real estate near Central Park and now officially designated as city landmarks.

But in recent years, a new wave of clubs, including Casa Cipriani, has proliferated, varying in price point, exclusivity and amenities. These clubs have risen by filling two voids left by the pandemic: the loss of “third places,” or locations distinct from work and home that can foster a sense of community, and the abundance of empty office space amid a new work-from-home culture.

Last month, over 98 million square feet of office space was available in Manhattan, nearly double the amount in March 2020, according to the real estate firm Colliers.

Since it opened in 2021, Casa Cipriani has become one of the city’s buzziest private clubs.

Commercial landlords are not in a position to be picky about their tenants, said Ruth Colp-Haber, chief executive of the real estate brokerage Wharton Property Advisors. “There are many New York City landlords that have a lot of empty space, and they need to figure out how they’re going to fill it,” said Ms. Colp-Haber. “They’re very welcome to new tenants, new types of uses.”

In a survey conducted by GGA Partners, a consulting firm for private clubs, over 60 percent of clubs reported an increase in membership for 2022. “The remote work environment fueled by Covid has created these executives who are working from home but still craving that social interaction,” said Zack Bates, the founder of Private Club Marketing.

The historical function of members’ clubs — to stratify the city by gender, race or class — persists today.

Aman New York, which opened in 2022, has offered a membership with an initiation fee of $200,000, plus annual dues. Exclusive access to Casa Cruz, which opened the same year, came at a price of $250,000 to $500,000. ZZ’s Club, from Major Food Group, has comparatively modest fees of $20,000 at initiation and $10,000 per year — the cost of getting into “the world’s first and only private location of Carbone,” the company’s restaurant beloved by celebrities.

On the other end of the spectrum, a membership at Verci — which has more of a D.I.Y., college campus feel — ranges from $200 to $300 a month, with no initiation fee. “We’ve been using this as our third space, our shared living room, a place for about 120 people that are all young and creative and artistic,” said Anant Vasudevan, a co-founder of Verci, which opened its first location in a former office space in Lower Manhattan last year.

The speedy growth has come with some sputtering. Soho House, one of the best-known clubs, announced late last year that it would stop admitting new members at its Los Angeles, New York and London spaces after complaints of overcrowding. The company, which has over 180,000 members and more than 40 locations worldwide, was founded in 1995 and helped pave the way for today’s clubs. In 2021, Soho House made an initial public offering during an aggressive expansion effort, but recently it has considered going private again.

Will the current flurry of hip, trendy clubs stand the test of time?

‘Staying Power’

The affordability of commercial real estate played a role in Verci’s ability to secure a physical space in downtown Manhattan, according to Mr. Vasudevan. “Being able to have a little bit of leverage on that side has been really helpful for us, especially as we start this out,” he said, adding that his company “retrofitted” the space to “feel more like a cozy environment rather than like a corporate environment.”

While many of the older institutions own their clubhouses, the newer ones tend to rent them: Verci, Remedy Place and Maxwell are on leases. “I wish we had the capabilities to buy the buildings,” said Jonathan Leary, the founder of Remedy Place, a “social wellness club.” “Maybe one day.”

Renting might limit the “staying power” of the newer clubs, said Diana Kendall, a professor of sociology at Baylor University and the author of “Members Only: Elite Clubs and the Process of Exclusion.” Dr. Kendall pointed out that some of the new crop “have already come and gone,” including the much-publicized women-only social club the Wing, which shuttered in 2022.

Some new clubs lack “the prestige and resources of the old, established clubs,” Dr. Kendall said, and are thus “more vulnerable to shifts in the economy and fluctuations in the employment sector even at the top levels.”

‘Who You Were and Who You Knew’

The city’s oldest clubs — places for wealthy New Yorkers (mainly white men, at the time of their founding) to socialize among other people of the same status — were created in a sometimes messy fashion, the stuff of gossip.

The Union Club, widely considered New York’s first men’s social club, formed in 1836 out of “an informal meeting of a number of gentlemen of social distinction,” as Francis Gerry Fairfield put it in his 1873 book, “The Clubs of New York.” According to Mr. Fairfield, the initiation fee was $200, and annual dues were $75. But by 1871, after a gentlemen’s disagreement over who was being let in, some members left and formed the Knickerbocker Club — the Knick, for short.

Many other clubs were springing up around this time, including the Century Association, the Brook and the Metropolitan Club, whose first president was J. Pierpont Morgan. The club culture “was dependent on who you were and who you knew,” Dr. Kendall said. During the Gilded Age, from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, “people were making lots of money — railroads, banking, all of that — in New York,” Dr. Kendall explained. “And so they really wanted places where they could sit around and have cocktails with each other.”

Many early clubs did not allow women or people of color as members. In response, some elite members of those marginalized groups formed their own associations. The socialite and suffragist Florence Jaffray Harriman founded the Colony Club in 1903, which became the city’s premier women’s social club. And the Harmonie Club was founded by Jewish men who were denied entry to other clubs.

The socialite and suffragist Florence Jaffray Harriman founded the Colony Club in

1903, which became the city’s premier women’s social club.Credit…Clark Hodgin for The New York Times

University clubs, such as the Yale, Harvard and Cornell clubs, were also popping up during this era to bring together people who shared academic credentials. Other clubs formed around mutual interests — for instance, the Anglers’ Club for those who loved fishing, the Lotos Club for the literary elite and the National Arts Club, which was founded by The New York Times critic Charles de Kay.

But interest in some clubs slumped in the mid- to late 20th century. As suburban development expanded, wealthy white people left New York City in droves and joined golf or country clubs. With membership down, the Union and Knickerbocker clubs even considered a merger.

What You Get for Getting In

With a plenitude of amenities, many of today’s New York City clubs offer more than the opportunity to hobnob.

At Remedy Place, members can take Zoom calls from hyperbaric oxygen chambers. And at Zero Bond, yuppies can, ironically or unironically, sip on a drink called the Trillionaire.

Other clubs pride themselves on offering little to no services. “We don’t have a fully functioning restaurant here, we’re not open until 6 p.m. during the weekdays — you can’t use this as a co-working space,” boasted David Litwak, a co-founder of Maxwell, which opened in Tribeca last year. “Our members have their own liquor locker. They can pour their own drinks.” Membership at Maxwell costs $3,000 annually, with initiation fees that range from $1,000 to $12,000.

Getting into some clubs may require navigating an opaque system. Cipriani’s website says the club “has the sole discretion to approve or deny any application for membership.” Those interviewing to join Maxwell need to pass “a vibe check,” Mr. Litwak said. “There’s no requirement for a degree of accomplishment. We have people who own hedge funds, or people who are in the lowest rung at hedge funds.”

These hoops can be part of the appeal of joining a private club. The clubs can “give you a feeling of prestige that in contemporary life a lot of people don’t necessarily have,” Dr. Kendall said — the feeling that you’re special enough to skip the line.

Searching for Third Places

For some people, private clubs function as a third place.Third places, such as libraries, coffee shops, bars and community centers, are locations where people can casually spend time outside of home and work — and research shows they have been under threat in recent years. The pandemic accelerated small-business closures, and in New York last year, Mayor Eric Adams — who is known to spend time at the private club Zero Bond — proposed budgets that forced libraries to cut their hours and programming.

For some people, private clubs have been filling that social void.

Last year, Sarah Mary Cunningham, a 41-year-old who works at Columbia Records, joined Remedy Place, which opened its Flatiron location in 2022 and has memberships ranging from $300 to $2,250 a month. Ms. Cunningham said she once made a friend while waiting for an IV drip at the club. “It was a shared connection,” she said. “There might not have been other ways for us to have met.”

The affordability of commercial real estate played a role in Verci’s securing a physical space in downtown Manhattan.Credit…Clark Hodgin for The New York Times

Joining Verci “opened up this whole world for me because I didn’t go to college,” said Khalil DaTerra, a 21-year-old artist. “So having this campus feeling of dropping into a community is so valuable.” Mr. DaTerra is a resident member at Verci, part of a program that allows some members who can’t afford the monthly fees to pay what they can or nothing at all.

But in some crucial ways, private clubs cannot be considered third places. In “The Great Good Place,” Ray Oldenburg, the sociologist who coined the term in the 1980s, detailed several characteristics that ideal third places have — including being inclusive and homely and not setting “formal criteria of membership and exclusion.”

The business interests of private clubs can also sometimes conflict with the desires of their members. While people who join private clubs often seek intimacy, personalized treatment and a feeling of exclusivity, the clubs usually seek profitability and increased membership.

Aaisha Bhuiyan, a 27-year-old who works in tech, joined a private social club at the end of last year. She moved from New York City to New Jersey so that she could afford to live on her own, she said, and having access to a club gave her “a place to host my friends without dragging them to another state.” But she said that being at the club has felt “transactional.”