The future is here in New York, whether you like it or not.
New York (and the world’s) first block chain-powered restaurant and member’s club is currently getting ready to open on Houston Street. Flyfish Club is an innovative new dining club concept from VCR Group, a new hospitality company that fuses traditional high quality dining experiences with modern technology. The company was established by VaynerX entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, restaurateur David Rodolitz, culinary officer Josh Capon, and EVP of Operations Conor Hanlon, a passionate team of industry experts with a collective 75+ years of experience in operations, marketing and branding, hospitality, and business.
Their latest concept, Flyfish Club, is currently set to rock the world of hospitality with their bold step forwards into the 21st century. While New York has seen more than its fair share of private dining clubs, it has never seen one quite like this. At Flyfish Club, membership will be purchased on the blockchain as a Non-Fungible-Token (NFT) and owned by the token-holder to gain access to the restaurant and its many culinary, cultural, and social experiences. Unique to Flyfish Club, membership cannot be purchased with US Dollars. Potential members will instead need to acquire a token through ETH, Ethereum’s cryptocurrency coin. Food and beverage purchases will still be made with US Dollars, but by turning membership into a unique utility, members will be able to lease or resell their memberships to interested parties whenever they wish. By converting membership into a unique token, members will be free to do whatever they wish with their membership, setting Flyfish Club well apart from similar concepts.
So, should you acquire your token, what exactly can you come to expect from Flyfish Club? The first thing to understand is that there are two different membership options. General membership can be attained with the acquisition of a “Flyfish” token (FF), which costs 2.5 ETH and is reserved at 2,650 NFTs. The more exclusive membership option will require a “Flyfish Omakase” tokens (FFO), which costs 4.25 ETH and is reserved at only 385 NFTs. All token holders will be granted access to the main restaurant, which will be a seafood-focused restaurant with a robust raw bar, drawing from international influences and created by award-winning chefs and hospitality experts. Additionally, token holders can also enjoy the exclusive cocktail lounge, a “gorgeous and spacious modern bar… with elegant seating, vibrant accents, high-ceilings, and showpiece back-bar”.
For FFO token holders though, they will be granted exclusive access to Flyfish Club’s private omakase experience, which will be “nestled away in a private section of our club, to ensure the tasting experience is perfectly curated without distraction” and will include the best quality fish flown in daily. As mentioned earlier, there will only be enough tokens for 385 members, so the omakase experience is expected to be as exclusive a dining experience as one can possibly have.
While the concept has been moving forward for some time, the team has only just recently secured real estate for the space. Vaynerchuk originally announced Flyfish Club on August 20, 2021 on CNBC, and has been steadily growing the concept ever since, slowly increasing the amount of tokens available for purchase before reaching the current limit. At the time of writing, all original tokens have already been minted and sold and are now available for resale through OpenSea.
Now though, Flyfish Club has just secured a 11,000 square feet space on three levels at 141 East Houston Street, occupying a new development where the former Sunshine Theatre used to be located. In a recent press release, Rodolitz stated that they “chose this location due to the dynamic neighborhood, the beauty of the building, and the shared vision with ownership of the future of members clubs”. The property is being designed by architectural firm Roger Ferris + Partners and was developed by East End Capital, Grandview Partners, and KPG Funds.
For more information you can follow Flyfish Club on Instagram.
