Death & Co Aims to Build a Bar-First Hotel Brand

Most hotel bars are an afterthought rather than the main attraction. Cult cocktail brand Death & Co. aims to flip that script by building hotels around bars instead of the reverse.

Death & Co. has teamed up with developer Ryan Diggins, who brought them in as the anchor bar at Denver’s 50-room The Ramble Hotel in 2018, to launch a boutique hotel brand called Midnight Auteur.

The brand's first property, the 44-room Municipal Grand, opened in July inside a converted 1960s bank in Savannah, Georgia.

“Without the locals, we’re just a hotel, and hotels are kind of boring to us,” said co-founder Ryan Diggins. “That doesn't excite us. We're in all the other stuff, and then wrap the rooms around it.”

A Cocktail Bar With Guest Rooms Upstairs

At Municipal Grand, the lobby is the main attraction. A semicircular cocktail bar anchors the space, drawing in locals for morning coffee, late-night cocktails, or at times in between. There�