Stringaree Turns Cool Night Air Into Hot, Hot Profits

Barely 100 years ago, San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter was known as the Stingaree district.
From the heavily booming shipping industry, a seedier underbelly began rising like the tide to the neighborhood’s surface. Gambling halls and saloons were situated next to houses of ill repute, and at night, flickering gas lamps bounced shadows off the skirts of prostitutes, out for a profitable stroll along the rowdy streets.
    Since San Diego’s turn of the century reformation, the only remnants of the days of the Stingaree district are the flickering gas lanterns in the now Gaslamp Quarter, and the neighborhood’s newcomer bearing the old name in lavender neon.
    The new Stingaree has been brought to the public by partners Demien Farrell and James Brennan, who currently also own Sidebar in the Gaslamp Quarter. As San Diego’s youngest nightlife resident, Stingaree now is the city’s largest nightclub/restaurant destination, capable of entertaining close to 1,300 guests at a time. Boasting a state-of-the-art club scene and a 150-person seated dining area, this venue has earned startling numbers in less than a year of operation.

Water and Wine
    Inside this historic corner building, with its big bay windows, resides a contemporary design by David Krumins. Three wine towers make an archway for guests to walk under as they approach the hostess at a reception desk. Emerging into the spacious restaurant, the first design triumph comes in liquid form. A 35-foot high waterfall, measuring about 25-feet wide and 4-feet thick, cascades down screens, surrounded by an island-styled bar. Walking around either side of the island bar, guests alight in the nightclub portion of Stingaree, where the staff already is hosting the likes of Chaka Khan, DJ Motiv8 from the Black Eyed Peas and Funk Master Flex. With its lofty DJ talent in the suspended booth and intense, digital lighting system, the main room is salient.
    Still, the distinctive allure of Stingaree pulls a guest’s eyes and desires ever upward for two more floors. Flanking either side of the main bar are two staircases that lead to the first mezzanine. Partially devoted to dinner seating for 25, the other half of the mezzanine leads to a catwalk with waist-high glass railings and a jaw-dropping view of the party on the dance floor below. In front of guests at this level is the Penthouse room, which may be acquired for an evening at a cost of $10,000 and more.
    “The Penthouse suite holds 50 to 70 people,” says Co-owner James Brennan, “It has a private bartender, and it is usually bought out by one person and then they invite whomever they choose. When Kanye West was here, he bought it out for an evening.”
    Moving against the waterfall’s beautiful current, guests ascend the stairs once more to Stingaree’s Rooftop Oasis.
    Accommodating 350 patrons at a time, the rooftop space contains six canvas-wrapped cabanas, a fire pit, four outer cabanas, a fountain and two beds.
    “Friday and Saturday night it goes to capacity before anything else,” says General Manager Mike Georgopoulos says. “Come summer, there might be a capacity problem.”

Picking The Perfect Crew
    Amidst all the posh amenities and soothing sounds of the rushing water, Stingaree’s staff provides flawless service.
    “First and foremost, we took our existing management team from Sidebar,” Georgopoulos says. “Six of us, and we built our team from that.”
    The staff was selected from more than 1,500 applicants. “They had to meet with six managers,” he says. “If they made it through the first round, the second interview had to be with a department head.” The process continued downward, until the final remaining 210 applicants met alone with Georgopoulos once more.
    “I drank a lot of bottled water those days,” he says. “It was a pretty intense process. There were some people who thought it was too much, but in my experience, our retention number was staggering.”
    The polished, professional 140-person workforce now hosts some of San Diego’s — and America’s — most respected industry individuals. Only open since December 3, 2005, the management group and J Public Relations began booking parties almost a year before the space was finished.
    “It was a major rush,” Brennan says of the combination of construction and promotion planning. “We built a 23,000-square foot nightclub from the ground up in four months, which is totally unheard of.”
    But when finished, the promotional prowess was level with the effort lavished on design. “One of the most successful,” Brennan says, “was with the W brand and Starwood hotels. It was a 2,000-person party to unveil their new lofts. I just couldn’t get over how impressed they were (with Stingaree), and they are pretty tough critics, so that was a major success.”

Eliminating the Rough Edges
    Every club owner building these days seems to claim to have studied the designs of New York, Las Vegas, Miami — to have sat and lounged and sipped in every setting — to have shaken and stirred and blended the benefits in each type of bar. The group at Stingaree, however, studied the flaws in America’s successful restaurants and bars for inspiration to ascertain how they might make a night out truly worth a patron’s dollar. The first example comes in company’s attention to their employees.
    “I told every employee hired that everything would be working — all the time. We really try to do everything we can to focus on our staff,” Georgopoulos says. “This means having a service bar built inside of the kitchen and on the rooftop so that waitresses won’t have to fight the bar crowd for drinks. The chef had to give up some prime real estate for that, but it was too important,” he says.
    Benefits extend to patrons in just as many ways. “One of the coolest things about the main bar on the restaurant side,” Georgopoulos says, “is if you are looking at it, it is sunken just on the restaurant side. We sunk it to make the seated customers eye level with the bartenders. It is more conducive to eating.”
    In addition, the eight booths in the dining room are not flush with the wall, but rather removed about two feet. This design feature allows waitresses to deliver food and cocktails from both sides and allows patrons to move in and out with ease.
    Serving more than 200 bottles of Grey Goose each Saturday at $375 a bottle, Stingaree is already swimming in profit. Furthermore, the owners have added the incentive of an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas for the staff if they can meet $9 million in sales by September. “Right now, we are at $2.8,” Georgopoulos says. “I think they are going to make it. We have some work ahead of us, but I think we are going to make it.” NCB