“Whereas the Groucho Club members had been stalwarts, Soho House got a lot of the young writers and producers who didn’t want to be in the Groucho Club,” says director Alek Keshishian, who frequented Soho House while living in London in the early 2000s. “It was a refuge, and I could take celebrity friends without having it reported in the press.”
Today Jones has five clubs in England, including Babington House, a historic Somerset country estate. Following a $200 million cash infusion from English rag-trade tycoon Richard Caring, the Soho House brand is expanding aggressively. Later this year Jones will open clubs in Berlin and Miami, with plans for more in 2011. Between flights he lives in London with his second wife, British TV presenter Kirsty Young, and their two children, and he recently purchased a home in Beverly Hills. (Jones also has two children from his previous marriage.)
Jones can seem restrained on first meeting, though he proved to be an attentive and chatty host at the hard-hat dinner. The secret of his success, says Frances Pennington, vice president of global marketing at Juicy Couture, who advised him on his Oscar house, is that he is a master at creating a “vibe.”
“When you walk into Cecconi’s, there’s an energy,” she says. “It’s part of Nick’s brand, and it’s something that’s hard to bottle.” Adds Keshishian: “He’s got a great sense for creating sanctuary. You can go there and let people come to you.”
Likely part of what drives Jones is a childhood memory he shares of eating out with his family and discovering for the first time just how inflexible restaurants can be to their customers’ wishes. As he boasts about instilling his staff with “yes culture”—a service attitude that puts the customer first—Jones sounds less like an English social arbiter than an American entrepreneur. “There’s no God-given right for this to work,” he says. “I have a gut feel that the location is fantastic. I think people will get it. But we’ve got a lot to deliver first.”
