Opening in early 2025 in Savannah, Georgia, is Municipal Grand, the inaugural hotel for cocktail-forward lifestyle hotel brand Midnight Auteur, which launched in March.
The brand is the brainchild of the founders of the Death & Co. cocktail brand as well as Ryan Diggins, the founder of Denver’s boutique Ramble Hotel. The partners first collaborated when Death & Co. opened its second location in the hotel’s lobby. The bar and lobby were interchangeable, and so their unique cocktail-anchored hotel experience was born.
Now the partners are taking that concept nationwide and building a brand around it. Created on the basis of thoughtful, personalized and local hospitality offerings, Midnight Auteur steps on the scene as travelers are increasingly craving unique experiences, especially in food and beverage.
Ahead of Municipal Grand’s 2025 opening, Hotel Dive sat down with Diggins, partner and CEO of Midnight Auteur, to discuss how Denver’s Ramble Hotel inspired the cocktail-focused flag and how the brand will stand apart from others in the rapidly expanding lifestyle space.
A budding brand
Midnight Auteur’s launch earlier this year coincided with Death & Co.’s first hotel location, The Ramble Hotel, celebrating its sixth year open in Denver’s hip River North arts district. The Ramble acts as a “springboard” for the new lifestyle brand and will influence its hotel projects to come, according to Diggins.
Since opening, The Ramble Hotel has become a Denver staple and filled a gap for quality lifestyle hospitality in the growing River North neighborhood, Diggins said, recalling a time when the now-bustling corner where The Ramble sits was a vacant lot.
In the mid-2010s, Diggins was sending everyone who came to visit Denver to River North, where music, food, art and nightlife were beginning to converge in the formerly industrial neighborhood. There was only one problem: The area was in desperate need of a hotel, a unique boutique hotel to be exact, Diggins thought.
But it couldn’t be just any boutique hotel. Diggins imagined one with style, that was community-forward and -driven, and would cause some buzz. The hotel Denver needed, he thought, was one that “could hit the zeitgeist of the times” but also hold up over the years — the likes of The Bowery Hotel in Manhattan’s Lower East Side or Sunset Tower in Los Angeles’ West Hollywood neighborhood, he said.
His idea became a reality in 2018, when on that once-vacant parcel in River North, he opened The Ramble Hotel. And what would make the property particularly unique was Death & Co.’s second bar location, the focal point of its lobby.
Founded in 2006, Death & Co. has a flagship establishment in New York City’s East Village. The cocktail-centered brand also has bar locations in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Following its success as a staple of The Ramble Hotel, Death & Co. teamed with Diggins to expand the cocktail-centered hotel concept nationwide, officially launching the partnership earlier this year.
The founders share an intention to operate hotels that “immerse guests fully and seamlessly between social spaces and retreat,” according to a brand statement obtained by Hotel Dive. And with that mission in mind, they set out to bring their cocktail-anchored experience — one in which the hotel lobby is interchangeable with the bar — to Savannah and beyond.
Midnight Auteur transcends a trends-oriented culture, though, Diggins noted. “In an industry that is so focused on trends, we’re really committed to the classics — great cocktails, a strong barista program, a perfect night’s sleep, warm hospitality and quality craftsmanship and materiality,” he said.
Authenticity matters
The secret to a great lifestyle concept, Diggins noted, is the authenticity behind it.
“Authentic local experience, if that’s dreamed up in a boardroom, it’s not going to have the soul we’re trying to [create],” he said, telling Hotel Dive that being hyper-focused on the trends surrounding experiential travel has led many hotels to create filler or checklist amenities. Diggins said it’s imperative not to “create amenities for amenities’ sake.”
“In an industry that is so focused on trends, we’re really committed to the classics — great cocktails, a strong barista program, a perfect night’s sleep, warm hospitality and quality craftsmanship and materiality.”
Ryan Diggins
Midnight Auteur Partner and CEO
“We are incredibly thoughtful in anything that is served or placed in the building. If we can’t justify its specific purpose, then it has no place in our hotel,” Diggins said. “This allows us to be trend-agnostic, and hopefully create hotels of permanence.”
During a panel discussion at The Lodging Conference in October, Rika Lisslö, vice president of development at Hyatt Hotels, shared a similar sentiment, saying lifestyle hotels must be authentic to their location and passion-driven.
To create that authentic local experience for guests, a hotel needs to “meet the locals where they’re at,” said Diggins, nodding to the Ramble Hotel’s lobby bar, which acts as a destination in and of itself for hotel guests as well as locals.
Midnight Auteur hotels, Diggins said, will first offer “a bar that is as good or better” than any cocktail bar in their destinations. They will focus on the more traditional hotel components second.
According to Diggins, the more an owner can fill their lobby with locals, the more enriching an experience the hotel guest will have. He said having a lobby bar attuned to what the local community wants and “filled with energy and people” is the value proposition of Midnight Auteur.
“If you stay with us, you might pay a little bit more than you would at other hotels in the market, but you’re paying for that curation, that experience,” Diggins said.
“Too many hotels get hung up on solving all of the hotel guest problems in their building,” Diggins said. “The hardest part is to create that place that locals want to be. If we can hit that first part, we know we’re gonna fall in line everywhere else: beautiful design, great rooms and hopefully great hospitality.”
Diggins’ Death & Co. partners are on the same page. “A remarkable hotel isn’t just a place to rest, it’s a gathering place in service to building a meaningful community,” said Alex Day in a statement.
In August, hospitality industry leader Sid Narang told Hotel Dive that more travelers, many of whom belong to younger generations, are “looking for authentic experiences” and value design, uniqueness and the restaurants and bars at hotels. This changing traveler demand is driving a rapid expansion of the lifestyle hotel sector.
Savannah incoming
So, how will Midnight Auteur stand out in the crowded lifestyle segment? According to Diggins, it’s about being “antiformulaic.”
“There are no brand standards, which gives us a lot of flexibility to design and create based on what we think the hotel needs,” Diggins said, adding, “The only formula is making sure we have really great cocktails, really great coffee, really warm hospitality.”
Each hotel under Midnight Auteur will be unique. In other words, the upcoming Municipal Grand will look nothing like The Ramble, Diggins noted.
The Savannah hotel’s design will be inspired by the city’s lush gardens and the building’s existing mid-century qualities, with local architect Lynch Associate Architects and its longstanding interior design partner AAmp Studio heading the project.
The revamped hotel will be located at the corner of Abercorn and Broughton Streets in the former First Federal Savings and Loan Association building, which most recently served as the Broughton Municipal Building. The property will offer 44 guest rooms and several food and beverage concepts, with — you guessed it — a namesake lobby bar “as the heartbeat of the property,” the brand leaders shared.
Additionally, the hotel will have a rooftop lounge and pool and a subterranean bar, the brand announced earlier this year. And the property’s cocktail focus will carry through to the guest rooms, which will include a minibar stocked with a bespoke selection of spirits, premium coffee and teas and unique glassware and bar tools.
Currently, the Midnight Auteur team is hard at work preparing for the opening of Municipal Grand, which Diggins calls the “sophomore album.” But beyond Savannah, Midnight Auteur is actively growing, with one other project in the works — though Diggins declined to share where exactly that will be.
Finding future destinations for hotels within the brand will be very “opportunity-specific,” Diggins said. “Anything we do, it has to be a legacy property. It has to be woven into the fabric of that city, that community, for the long haul.”
