One afternoon in 2022, Lucia Penrod and her niece sat down for a late lunch at Contessa, a recently opened restaurant in Miami’s Design District, and ordered a bottle of wine. Less than an hour later, the server dropped the check and asked if they could move to the bar so the restaurant could be set for dinner.
“I’m like, ‘Why? I’m not moving. I have not finished my wine,’” Penrod recalls. The manager came over. When Penrod explained that she was the owner of Nikki Beach, a network of clubs and resorts around the globe co-founded by her late husband, Jack, she was allowed to stay. But, she says, she left the restaurant thinking, “Oh my God, these New Yorkers are trying to turn Miami into New York.’” What she didn’t know was that “these New Yorkers”—by which Penrod means the hospitality powerhouse Major Food Group (MFG), co-founded by Jeff Zalaznick, Mario Carbone, and Rich Torrisi—had their sights set on her own property.
