After buying 'bite-sized' Frenchmen Hotel, new owner has appetite for more in New Orleans
BY ANTHONY MCAULEY | STAFF WRITER JUN 8, 2021 - 9:00 AM
The interior of The Frenchmen Hotel, which has been acquired by Robert Thompson's Angevin & Co. Thompson last year left Punch Bowl Social, the chain of entertainment-focused restaurant/arcades he'd founded 12 years earlier and now plans to acquire boutique hotels in New Orleans.
Robert Thompson, who recently purchased The Frenchmen Hotel in the Marigny, says the offbeat inn is a "good, bite-sized" start for the long-time restaurateur's plan to accumulate a portfolio of similar boutique properties in the Crescent City.
The acquisition is the latest in a trend by hoteliers angling for smaller hotels, often in refurbished historic buildings, aimed at Millennials and Gen-Z. Younger travelers, developers say, are looking for places that offer something different from the traditional big-brand hotels. Other recent examples include The Saint on Canal, The Hotel Saint Vincent in the Garden District, and Hotel Peter & Paul, a converted church in the Marigny.
Thompson purchased the 27-room hotel at 417 Frenchmen Street for an undisclosed sum last week from another group of ambitious hotel owners: Alex Ramirez, Jayson Seidman and Zach Kupperman, who had refurbished the The Drifter motel on Tulane Avenue, among other projects.
They had owned The Frenchmen only since 2018, having bought it from Hugh Stiel, who now owns The Royal Frenchmen Hotel Bar and Gallery at the Washington Square end of Frenchmen Street.
Thompson plans a full renovation and expects to re-open in the fourth quarter of this year.
Thompson is moving into the hotel business having resigned as CEO last August from the Punch Bowl Social chain of "eatertainment" venues that he'd founded and built up over the previous dozen years. The venues, which offer bowling lanes, arcade games, darts, ping pong and karaoke rooms to draw customers to its restaurants and bars, had grown to 20 outlets across the country until the pandemic brought progress to a quick halt.
A Mississippi native, Thompson started in the restaurant business in Denver in the mid-1990s. He and his private equity backers partially sold the Punch Bowl Social chain in 2019, when the company that owns the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain bought a minority stake for $140 million.
He stepped away from Punch Bowl last August, several months before the company declared bankruptcy to fend off creditors. Thompson said he wanted a fresh start for himself and his young family and chose New Orleans.
"I just spent last 10 years growing an enterprise that was doing $190 million run rate of sales in 2019 and that required me to spend 50%-to-60% of my time on the road," said Thompson. "I've got three young kids and just through COVID I got used to being around them again, and I decided I'm just not going to live like that anymore."
He said New Orleans, "which has been my favorite city since I was a kid," is a small city with an outsized hospitality industry, which means he has the opportunity to build a large business here without having to leave the city.