How the company behind the bar Death & Co is becoming a global brand

The Modern Retail Podcast

Death & Co is an internationally known cocktail bar. It first began in New York but has expanded to other cities like Los Angeles and Washington, DC. But the company has big ambitions to grow even more.

That's what led to the creation of Gin & Luck, the umbrella company of the bar that launched in 2018. According to David Kaplan, who started Death & Co in 2006 and is now CEO of Gin & Luck, the idea is "to create a unified hospitality landscape where we could have all of these entrepreneurial pursuits -- all of our Death & Co growth -- under one company."

That includes more Death & Co locations opening up over the next year, as well as a cocktail bar brand called Close Company. It also means retail opportunities like an online marketplace, a book business and an e-learning platform.

Kaplan joined this week's Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about how he's approaching transforming a popular bar into a global business.

While there are many different parts of the business, the bars are still core. "Our primary economic engines -- and the focus points of our business -- really are our brick and mortars," he said.

Still, the other areas are integral to Gin & Luck's growth. "Everything else that we do -- our marketplace, even our social, the books, the ready-to-drink cocktails, we're working on a new education platform -- all of those things, for the most part, we view as a true standalone business," he said. "So it can't just be a loss leader for us."