Tampa restaurant company buys Don the Beachcomber brand
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Aug 19, 2022

A Tampa-based hospitality company has acquired the intellectual property of an iconic California restaurant brand.

Marc Brown, president of 23 Restaurant Services, told the Tampa Bay Business Journal that the company has finalized a deal to purchase the Don the Beachcomber brand from Delia Snyder, who had owned it since 2003. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Snyder had worked for Donn Beach, aka Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt, who founded the brand after his travels in the South Pacific and is widely considered the founding father of modern-day tiki culture.

23 Restaurant Services is the parent company of Ford’s Garage, Tiki Docks and Yeoman’s Cask and Lion. Some aspects of the Don the Beachcomber brand will be incorporated into Tiki Docks locations, and 23 Restaurant Services is also looking for stand-alone sites for the concept, Brown said.

Storytelling is a major part of Ford’s Garage, a casual dining concept with the feel of a 1920s service station and a focus on American automobile culture. Tiki Docks will be one platform for sharing the history and life of Don the Beachcomber.

“Admittedly, when we built Tiki Docks, I didn’t have the full understanding of tiki culture,” Brown said. “I think we’ve built a good product with Tiki Docks, but I don’t think it represents the history of tiki as well as it could. This will allow us to get really authentic with it.”

The acquisition includes the brand’s closely held cocktail recipes. Some Tiki Docks locations — there are restaurants open in Riverview and South St. Petersburg and locations in the works in Madeira Beach, suburban Orlando and on the Space Coast — will have Don the Beachcomber bars within them, Brown said.

It’s too soon, Brown said, to say what the ideal prototype for new Don the Beachcomber locations will look like, though 23 Restaurant Services is actively looking at sites.

“There will be some symmetries between the two,” Brown said of Tiki Docks and Don the Beachcomber. “But we’re really raising the authenticity of both brands.”