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On New Year’s Eve 2006, David Kaplan opened Death & Co at 433 East 6th Street in Manhattan’s East Village. The bar seated 48 people. Five days later, the New York Times covered it, and there has been a line out the door ever since. Over eighteen years, the company grew into bars, books, consulting, merchandise, and hotels. When it came time to fund the next phase, Kaplan skipped the private equity meeting. The people who understood why Death & Co was worth funding were already paying for drinks there.
Total raised across all rounds
$17.56M
Per KingsCrowd closed-round data, 2018–2025
Closed funding rounds
6
2018–2025, two platforms, three exemption types
First raise, 2018
$2.27M
At a $13M valuation
New locations, 2025
6
Nashville, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Melbourne, Brisbane, Savannah hotel
Death & Co opened in January 2007 as an intimate East Village bar that took cocktail craft seriously before the broader market caught on. By 2010, it had won America’s Best Cocktail Bar and World’s Best Cocktail Menu at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards, and its original recipes were being replicated in bars...
Private equity has a standard model for hospitality brands: standardize operations, accelerate unit growth, exit at a multiple. That model produces fast casual restaurant chains. It does not produce Death & Cos. The value of what Gin & Luck had built was inseparable from how it operated, and the version of growth a fund would have demanded would have destroyed that uniqueness.
Nearly two decades of brand equity, multiple operating bars, three published books, an active consulting firm, and a customer base that followed the brand like a band. No shortage of proof. A shortage of capital partners who understood what they were looking at.
The most aligned investors were already in the reservation database. Reg A+ gave the company a legal mechanism to make them an offer directly, at accessible minimums, inside the brand’s own world. A cap table of customers is a different kind of alignment than anything a term sheet produces.
Between 2018 and 2025, Gin & Luck closed six separate funding rounds across two platforms and three exemption types. Each round was made credible by what the previous one had funded.
| Round | Close Date | Amount Raised | Valuation | Regulation | Key Evidence at Time of Raise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Round 1 | Sep 2018 | $2.27M | $13M | Reg CF / Reg D 506(c) | America's Best Cocktail Bar, Denver location open and generating revenue, 120,000+ books sold |
| Round 2 | Oct 2021 | $1.13M | $18M | Test the Waters | Multiple operating locations, consulting and publishing revenue, D.C. expansion underway |
| Round 3 | May 2022 | $6M | $18M | Reg A+ | Four U.S. bars, consulting and merchandise revenue established |
| Round 4 | May 2024 | $1.18M | $50M | Reg CF | Continued bar growth, hotel partnership underway |
| Round 5 | Oct 2024 | $0.83M | $50M | Reg CF | Same valuation round, second close |
| Round 6 | Nov 2025 | $6.15M | $47.8M | Reg A+ | $14M 2024 revenue, four U.S. bars, six confirmed expansion projects |
The 2025 raise was not a pitch to strangers. The investors who participated in 2018 had spent seven years watching the company open the locations, publish the books, and execute the plan they had funded. The community was compounding, not just accumulating.
Gin & Luck’s campaigns were not product launches with an investment button. The company raised from an audience that had already demonstrated, by showing up and paying, that it understood the value of what was being built.
The core story never changed across seven years of raising. Every campaign returned to the same framing: Death & Co is a brand, the bar is the entry point, and the platform underneath it can carry hotels, education, and new cities. What changed was the evidence behind it.
The perk structure made the alignment explicit. Priority reservations began at the $2,500 investment tier, with higher tiers offering investor-only menus at 2007 prices, private classes, and pre-opening access at new locations. The perks were not merchandise. They were more of the experience investors were already paying for. Kaplan put it directly: “I was wary at first and quickly understood the incredible power that crowdfunding could have, and how aligned it is with how we’ve grown our business.”
Each proof point existed because the previous round had funded the work to produce it. The 2018 raise funded the expansion that justified the 2025 raise. That is the structural logic of crowdfunding as a capital strategy: the community finances the milestones that make the community larger.
December 31, 2006
David Kaplan opens Death & Co on New Year’s Eve in Manhattan’s East Village. The New York Times covers it five days later. By 2010, it is named the best cocktail bar in America.
FOUNDING · NEW YORK CITY
David Kaplan opens Death & Co on New Year’s Eve in Manhattan’s East Village. The New York Times covers it five days later. By 2010, it is named the best cocktail bar in America.
September 2018
Gin & Luck closes its first equity crowdfunding round, a Reg CF / Reg D 506(c) raise. Denver opens at the Ramble Hotel the same year; Los Angeles follows in 2019.
FIRST CROWDFUNDING ROUND
Gin & Luck closes its first equity crowdfunding round, a Reg CF / Reg D 506(c) raise. Denver opens at the Ramble Hotel the same year; Los Angeles follows in 2019.
October 2021
A “Test the Waters” round gauges investor demand ahead of a larger Series B raise. Washington D.C. opens, and the consulting and publishing lines continue growing.
SECOND ROUND · "TEST THE WATERS"
A “Test the Waters” round gauges investor demand ahead of a larger Series B raise. Washington D.C. opens, and the consulting and publishing lines continue growing.
May 2022
A Reg A+ Series B round closes at the full $6 million target. Four U.S. bars are now open, alongside an established consulting and merchandise business.
THIRD ROUND
A Reg A+ Series B round closes at the full $6 million target. Four U.S. bars are now open, alongside an established consulting and merchandise business.
May 2024
The company opts for a Reg CF round, closing at a $50 million valuation — nearly triple the 2022 mark. Hotel partnership work with Midnight Auteur is underway.
FOURTH ROUND
The company opts for a Reg CF round, closing at a $50 million valuation — nearly triple the 2022 mark. Hotel partnership work with Midnight Auteur is underway.
October 2024
A second Reg CF close at the same $50 million valuation extends the prior round rather than resetting terms.
FIFTH ROUND
A second Reg CF close at the same $50 million valuation extends the prior round rather than resetting terms.
July 2025
Municipal Grand opens in Savannah, Georgia, a 44-room boutique hotel built around the bar rather than the reverse, under the Midnight Auteur Hotels joint venture. It is the first hotel Gin & Luck has built from scratch.
HOTEL OPENING · MUNICIPAL GRAND, SAVANNAH
Municipal Grand opens in Savannah, Georgia, a 44-room boutique hotel built around the bar rather than the reverse, under the Midnight Auteur Hotels joint venture. It is the first hotel Gin & Luck has built from scratch.
November 2025
Gin & Luck closes its largest single Reg A+ round to date. Proceeds fund openings in Nashville, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Seattle, Melbourne, and Brisbane. The company is on track for $20 million in revenue.
SIXTH ROUND
Gin & Luck closes its largest single Reg A+ round to date. Proceeds fund openings in Nashville, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Seattle, Melbourne, and Brisbane. The company is on track for $20 million in revenue.
Death & Co’s path is worth studying because it shows what crowdfunding can accomplish when a founder recognizes what their customer base actually represents. This was not a company that turned to retail investors because conventional capital was unavailable. It was a company that understood its most aligned investors were already sitting at its bar.
Across six closed rounds, two platforms, and seven years, the company built an investor community that doubled as a reservation pipeline, a word-of-mouth network, and a source of repeat capital. The $6.15M closed in late 2025 happened because 2018 worked, and because the investors who watched it work came back.
The narrative never changed between 2018 and 2025: Death & Co is a brand, not a bar. What changed was the evidence. In 2018, it was one award-winning bar and a bestselling book. In 2025, it was four locations, $14M in revenue, and a hotel. The community funded the gap between those two versions.
The 2018 raise funded the expansion that produced the revenue that justified the 2025 raise. Each round’s capital built the proof that made the next round credible.
A Death & Co investor is, by definition, someone who already knows why Death & Co is worth visiting. With priority reservations and pre-opening access built into the perk tiers, the cap table became a population of brand advocates with a financial stake in every new opening. Community-building and capital-raising were the same activity.
Private equity would have required uniformity, and uniformity would have destroyed the uniqueness that made the brand worth owning. Capital from people who understood exactly what they were buying, deployed without changing the thing being bought. That is the engine. The refusal to standardize was not a flaw; it was the moat.
Planet Wealth works with founders to structure raises that attract real capital from aligned investors.
