Hartford Business Journal

3 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | JANUARY 3, 2022 Deal Watch Trendy Sensibility With 'Instagrammable' food concepts and vibe, The Place 2 Be's Luari has major expansion plans for Hartford, elsewhere Current locations: ■ The Place 2 Be, 615 Franklin Ave., Hartford; opened in 2016 ■ The Place 2 Be, 5 Constitution Plaza, Hartford; opened Oct. 2020 ■ The Place 2 Be, Blue Back Square, West Hartford; opened June 2021 Future targeted locations: ■ The Place 2 Be, Basketball Hall of Fame, Springfield; early 2022 target opening ■ The Place 2 Be, 338 Elm St., New Haven; early 2022 target opening ■ Unnamed brick oven pizzeria, 275 Pearl St., Hartford; 2022 target opening ■ Unnamed restaurant featuring Central and South American cuisine, 900 Main St., Hartford; 2022 target opening ■ Unnamed raw bar seafood restaurant, 280 Trumbull St., Hartford; planned 2022 opening By Michael Puffer mpuffer@hartfordbusiness.com G jinovefa "Gina" Luari was only 24 when she opened The Place 2 Be restaurant on Franklin Avenue in Hartford's North End. The trendy restaurant serves brunch all day with colorful presentations amid vibrant, modern décor appealing to a younger sensibility. Over the past two years, amid the pandemic, Luari opened two more restaurants, one in downtown Hartford and another in West Hartford's Blue Back Square. As many restaurants struggled and shuttered, Luari and her team maintained a focus on image and culture that, along with keen social media marketing, allowed The Place 2 Be to thrive. Sales in 2021 jumped to $10 million, from $3 million a year earlier, Luari said. Now she has big plans to open five new restaurants in 2022, including one in New Haven, another in Springfield, and three more in downtown Hartford. That would make her one of the Capital City's most prolific restaurateurs. Luari is betting big on downtown Hartford even as a series of new COVID-19 variants lend greater uncertainty as to when city-based companies will bring back more corporate workers. But she isn't just banking on the return of office workers who have long been the basis of downtown Hartford's retail food chain. "When people talk about the corporate workers, it's frustrating, because it's like they completely forget about the residents that live downtown," Luari said. "And there is an immense amount of residents who live downtown, with new apartments opening every year — every month, actually." "Instagrammable" Each Place 2 Be has its own vibe and aesthetic, with slick but casual and fun ambiance. The downtown Hartford location has a deep clawfoot bathtub where customers can lounge and take photos. Swinging chairs are suspended from the ceiling, while vines wrap around building supports. Most drinks come with small, yellow rubber ducks floating in them. "My daughter probably has 50 of them at the house," said David Griggs, CEO and president of the MetroHartford Alliance. Griggs' 7-year-old daughter orders a lemonade with every visit. It comes with strawberry and vanilla drizzle. "Every time we go there it is an absolute experience," Griggs said. "Everything that comes out of the kitchen is Instagrammable. The small details put into it is one of the things that make it successful. And the food is incredible." Lauri encountered a lot of doubts in the past few years, from lenders and potential landlords, said her mother, Marjana Luari. Marjana Luari admits even she questioned her daughter's decision to open her first restaurant on Franklin Avenue. Despite her misgivings, the elder Luari worked alongside her daughter to open and operate the venture. At first, it was just the two Luari women and two servers. Six years later, Gina Luari's company employs more than 100. By 2023, Luari anticipates more than 200 workers in eight restaurants. Doubts have thinned considerably as The Place 2 Be boomed, with each location drawing lines hours- deep on weekends. "She knows what she is doing, and she has shown she can do it over and over and over," Marjana Luari said. New concepts Gina Luari, now 30, is preparing to open a new Place 2 Be restaurant at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in early 2022, as well as another location at 338 Elm St., in New Haven, near Yale University. She also hopes to open three new restaurants in Hartford outside the Place 2 Be brand in 2022. Luari is in talks to open a new brick-oven pizza restaurant in a former city fire house at 275 Pearl St., where developer Joseph Klaynberg plans to redevelop the property into 40 apartments and 4,000 square feet of retail space. Klaynberg is landlord to Luari's existing Place 2 Be at 5 Constitution Plaza — a former hotel property that he and a partner converted into a mixed-use residential building with 194 apartments. Luari took over a ground-floor space in that building vacated by the failed Spectra Wired café. Luari said she has also signed a lease for the former Dish Bar & Grill space in the Sage Allen apartment building at 900 Main St., which is also being redeveloped. There, Lauri plans to open early in the new year a restaurant featuring Central and South American fare, a specialty of her culinary director, Xavier Santiago. Luari is also in talks to open a "raw bar" seafood restaurant in the former V's Trattoria space at 280 Trumbull St., right across from the Hartford Stage. Luari said she plans to "lean heavily" into the burgeoning downtown population by cultivating a "hospitality ecosystem" of varied dining options. Today, downtown hosts nearly 3,500 apartments with hundreds HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER Gina Luari, founder of The Place 2 Be restaurant, inside her downtown Hartford location.

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