Guest Housethe modern American steakhouse known for its prime tomahawk, caviar-topped tuna cones, theatrical cocktails, stunning tableside presentations and top desserts in Austin and Las Vegas, will open in Scottsdale on Friday, January 9.
The new Arizona restaurant, where chef Todd Mark Miller will serve spicy rigatoni, wagyu pastrami and crowd-pleasing buttermilk chicken tenders, is taking over the former Etta’s location in the Scottsdale Quarter. It’s part of the rapid expansion of RDM Hospitality, which in 2024 spun off The Guest House Austin and opened The Guest House Las Vegas with the backing of the restaurant financing powerhouse. kindly.
The Guest House, which has served guests including Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Aaron Rodgers, Conor McGregor, Kevin Hart, Dasha, Ella Balinska, Steve Aoki and Gordon Ramsay in Austin and Las Vegas, is a restaurant brand that combines dining and nightlife in a comfortable and uncrowded environment. DJs, including nightclub heads such as Cedric Gervais, Francis Mercier, Chantel Jeffries, 15 Grams and Dimitri, set the tone every night, but dinner is the main event.
RDM CEO Raj Kumar tells the Observer that there are plans to open Guest House locations in Dallas, Houston and Denver.
“Having the support of InKind RDM has helped us open three restaurants in less than two years and it gives us the confidence to move on to the next three because we have the best financing and the most flexible financing,” Kumar said.
Instead of giving out loans or taking equity, inKind finances restaurants by pre-purchasing food and drink on credit at a discount and then selling this credit to customers on its app.
RDM Hospitality is a thriving business, but also a side project for founder Johann Moonesinghe and partner David Mulugheta, who both have very prominent day jobs. Moonesinghe is the founder and CEO of kindlyrecently raised $450 million from backers including Magnetar and Jay-Z and Robbie Robinson’s MarcyPen. In 2024, Mlugheta, who is president of the sports team at the management company Athletes First, became the first agent to negotiate more than $1 billion in NFL contracts in one year.
“RDM is about learning how to operate restaurants profitably, and we’re taking what we’ve learned back to the restaurants that are part of inKind,” Moonesinghe tells the Observer.
When the Guest House opened in Austin on February 18, 2024, inKind had funded 1,407 restaurants. By Tuesday, when the Observer spoke to Moonesinghe, that number had grown to 5,756 restaurants. Moonesinghe says his goal at InKind is to support another 8,000 restaurants by 2026.
Before InKind bought the Etta restaurant group out of bankruptcy, Etta Scottsdale was doing about $400,000 a month. Moonesinghe credits Kumar with increasing revenue to more than $1 million a month at Etta Scottsdale, but then RDM realized he had an even better asset at The Guest House.
“The most important part of RDM is that we learn it, and what we’ve learned is that it’s really hard to build multiple brands at scale,” Moonesinghe said. “And Guest House is such a successful product and we have so much opportunity to scale it that we decided to focus on the Guest House brand only. We expect to open our Dallas location later this year and open two more locations next year.”
Mulugheta, who has led Guest House activations including a Super Bowl pop-up in New Orleans and “celebrity waiter nights” with NFL players like Micah Parsons and CJ Stroud who moonlights as servers and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity, likes to have a fun, welcoming and safe place to send clients and friends.
“The first time I walked into the Guest House, it was something different than anything we had in the city of Austin,” said Mlugheta. “Johann and Raj have created a place with amazing food and amazing service, and the vibe just keeps getting better. You get a mix of people from all different backgrounds. There’s a mix of cultures. And Raj was very intentional about who he hired. It’s like that TV show, Happiness. Everyone knows your name. There is no place where you come to dinner once every six months. It is somewhere you want to be whenever you have free time. It really is a community.”
“The focus is on creating a community dining experience,” Kumar said. “We’ve created a place with a broad and accessible menu where people can go three times a week and eat three different meals while enjoying the music and the vibe.”
Scottsdale, where Catch recently opened and where Din Tai Fung and Boa Steakhouse are on the way, is an up-and-coming restaurant market likely to embrace this vibe. InKind already works with several Scottsdale locations, including Toca Madera, Élephante, Bottled Blonde, 40 Love and Zinque. Moonesinghe’s goal with RDM is to cultivate customers who patronize more restaurants.
“We are not competing with all these Kind-funded restaurants,” said Moonesinghe. “What happens is that we get a lot of people who enter the Guest House and then we send them to other restaurants in our network. It is important that we help build an ecosystem in these cities.”
Kumar and Mulugheta echo this sentiment of a rising tide.
“In the last two years, we have seen an increase in the number of high-value tourists,” Kumar said. “When we look at our bookings, we see that inKind users tend to spend more money.”
Mulugheta tells her customers to download the inKind app to see which restaurants to visit on the go.
“They’re definitely looking at the app to see where their next meal is,” he says.
They can also check the app to see where they can drink and where they will be served, as inKind also funds bars and nightclubs. RDM is working to launch its new concept for the Guest Guest Room in Las Vegas, a cocktail bar/lounge attached to the Guest House, which will open in Dallas, Houston and Denver.
“This is not just about dinner,” Kumar said of his plans at Guest House and RDM. “It’s about positive experiences.”
