Exceptional ideas are often born when great friends and colleagues gather around the table to enjoy food and drink along with each other’s company. As meaningful conversation flowed and more wine was poured, the three owners of Danu Partners did just that during a night out on the town at their favorite U.S. restaurant, Smith & Wollensky.

The iconic Boston-based collection of “steakhouses to end all arguments” served as their home away from home while conducting business stateside, where after decades of patronage, the bartenders knew their drink orders by heart and the servers treated them like family. From Chicago to Miami, the warm ambiance, exquisite culinary offerings, rich history, community ties, and instant familiarity shown by the restaurant teams who always took the time to cheerily greet them with “It’s nice to see you again” at each location across the country encompassed everything Danu loved about the hospitality industry. Put simply, Smith & Wollensky not only met, but exceeded expectations, every single time at each location.

Their passion for the time-honored steakhouse brand, close relationships with the owners, and profound admiration for their guest-driven and people-first approach to hospitality inspired Danu to become a franchisee partner in 2015, expanding Smith & Wollensky internationally to include a London location. On the heels of a successful opening for Smith & Wollensky’s first foray overseas, Danu went on to acquire the Boston-based restaurant group in its entirety later that next year. Keeping the operation headquartered in the Commonwealth was a decision as certain to them as acquiring the company in the first place. The more time they spent in Boston, the more their desire grew to invest in this community they had come to cherish. The next step was to seek out more opportunities to grow their local portfolio with other companies equally grounded in the philosophy that from guests to staff to industry peers, it’s always all about the people because they are what matters most. From there, they’d need to develop an umbrella company solely focused on New England ventures. The result was PPX Hospitality Brands.

PPX was built on the idea that true hospitality stems from treating every guest and team member with the utmost courtesy, generosity, and respect befitting a Personne Particulièrement Extraordinaire, the French term for a particularly extraordinary person, or rather, a PPX.  A code used within the hospitality industry’s lexicon, it was often scrawled within the margins of a restaurant manager’s reservation book to denote a guest’s prestige along with a slew of other acronyms that revealed personal details about their preferences. The uninitiated could glance at the shorthand and see a mere jumble of unintelligible letters, ensuring discretion while covertly providing staff with the information necessary to go above and beyond for their guests. This basic principle that everyone from the team to the guests are all VIPs is the backbone of PPX’s culture. They believe that it takes extraordinary people to deliver extraordinary experiences and that at the end of the day, it all comes down to the people. It’s always about the people.

In addition to its flagship “America’s Steakhouse”, PPX Hospitality Brands has also acquired family-founded Strega restaurants , adding this iconic Boston-based groups into their fold.  PPX is committed to deliver on their mission of investing in the Northeast as its hub of unwavering support and dedication to the extraordinary people that are the heartbeat of its existence. Boston is also strategically located in the center of future growth and expansion both domestically and internationally for some of America’s most beloved brands!  The future is extraordinary at PPX Hospitality Brands!