Zero Bond Shrimp Company

(Exclusive.) The owner of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company is in negotiations to buy Zero Bond, once one of New York’s most exclusive and infamous private members' clubs, Breaker has learned. 

Tilman Fertitta, who Forbes estimates is worth $11.1bn, bought Keens steakhouse for a reported $30 million late last year, and is set to add the Noho club to a hospitality portfolio that already includes Joe’s Crab Shack and the Rainforest Cafe. Fertitta is also a partner with Mark Birnbaum and Eugene Remm in Catch Hospitality and a co-owner of another downtown hotspot, The Corner Store. 

Under the terms of the proposed deal Fertitta will buy out the original investors. Its current owner, Scott Sartiano and his partner Will Makris will keep their equity and will continue to be involved in running the club, where an annual membership can cost as much as $4,400. People with knowledge of the negotiations say the deal is not yet finalized and multiple foreign buyers have also been circling Zero Bond. As part of his downtown New York hospitality expansion Fertitta is also in talks to purchase Sartiano’s eponymous Soho restaurant. 

Those who know Fertitta describe him as a dealmaker historically animated by an ambition to make it. He started out selling womens' apparel in Texas. Then moved on to vitamins, video game arcades and construction before investing in a chain of Cajun restaurants run by two brothers, Floyd and Bill Landry. 

Fertitta took charge of operations, left at least one partner feeling frozen out, according to Texas Monthly, removed the Cajun spicing from all the dishes, and landed on a formula for squeezing expenses and increasing revenue that formed the foundation for a national empire.

It has also allowed him to purchase a swath of waterfront near Houston, take on one of Texas' oldest philanthropic families and get himself invited to the Clinton White House at least four times. But he seems to have had a change of heart (or at least party) since. In December Donald Trump nominated Fertitta to be his U.S. ambassador to Italy and has referred to him as his “twin.” 

He is now, by some measures, the wealthiest restaurateur in the world, owns the Houston Rockets, had a distinctly Trump-esque reality show on CNBC and appears in the kind of Texas wealth magazines that describe him as "the very picture of the man who has it all, sitting here in the spoils of his wealth" and praise the interior of his yacht as displaying "forward-looking luxury". 

“Fertitta finds these entrepreneurs that are in the industry in New York that have created something that has buzz and sees if he can leverage that buzz to make money in cities like Dallas or Nashville,” a nightlife insider tells us. 

Zero Bond will debut at the Wynn Las Vegas later this year in what may be the first of many offshoots. Hopefully it won't join Soho House, owned by fellow billionaire Ron Burkle and now open in more than 40 cities around the world, in becoming the Dunkin' Donuts of private members clubs.

It's the latest development in a thriving private club scene downtown. The Twenty Two by Union Square, owned by Navid Mirtorabi and Jamie Reuben, attracts a younger crowd than Zero Bond. At Casa Cipriani Maggio Cipriani, the great-grandson of Giuseppe Cipriani, keeps the barrier to entry tight. They join Chez Margaux in the Meatpacking from Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and The Ned in Nomad also owned by Burkle. Next month Jeff Klein’s Los Angeles fixture San Vicente Bungalows, is set to open in the Jane Hotel. Over the weekend it hosted the afterparty for the SNL50: The Homecoming Concert. A rep for Zero Bond and a rep for Fertitta did not respond to requests for comment.