Nobu Hospitality LLC, the sushi restaurant and luxury hotel chain founded by Robert De Niro, chef Nobu Matsuhisa and movie producer Meir Teper, expects to reach $1 billion in revenue in five years as it adds condos to its growing empire.
A key step in the company's growth was its first foray into the condo market, with 660 units and 36 luxury-hotel suites above a Nobu restaurant in Toronto. The project, announced last year, sold out in three months. After starting with one sushi restaurant in New York in 1994, the company now has more than 40 locations, including London and Las Vegas, said Trevor Horwell, chief executive officer of closely held Nobu Hospitality.
"It's quite a rapid growth," Horwell said Monday while breaking ground at the Toronto project on Mercer Street in the entertainment district. "Normally in our restaurants we can have over 100,000 customers a year. All we've got to do is convert 10 to 15 percent of those customers to fill our hotels. So that's why we went into hotels."
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