A 445,000-square-foot resort casino set to open outside Petersburg, Virginia by late 2027 just topped out its structural steel — and the food and beverage program coming with it is large enough to reorder the regional hospitality supply chain. Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia, a joint venture between The Cordish Companies and Bruce Smith Enterprise, has confirmed 20 restaurant and bar venues across the property, anchored by three established Cordish concepts with national footprints and award recognition.
The F&B Slate
The flagship dining concepts — Sports & Social, The Prime Rib®, and Luk Fu — are each proven performers within the Live! portfolio. Sports & Social, a USA Today Top 10 Sports Bar honoree with 18 locations nationwide, will occupy an 8,000-square-foot venue built around an 82-foot-wide LED screen. The Prime Rib®, which earned a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence in 2026 and holds a consistent Zagat No. 1 rating across its D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana locations, brings fine-dining anchor weight to the resort. Luk Fu, a Pan-Asian concept awarded Best Asian and Best Sushi by Casino Player Magazine's 2025 Best of Dining & Nightlife Awards, rounds out the trio with a menu spanning Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, and Japanese preparations using locally sourced proteins and produce. Both Luk Fu and The Prime Rib at the Virginia property are being designed by Beth Bloom Designs, a national hospitality interior firm.
The remaining venues — rounding out the 20 total — have not yet been announced. Cordish has indicated that local hospitality partnerships will be revealed in the lead-up to the 2027 opening, a cadence that mirrors how the company has seeded regional operator relationships at its Maryland and Philadelphia properties.
What This Means for Operators and Vendors
The scale here warrants attention from regional food and beverage suppliers, distributors, and service contractors. Cordish projects $2.8 billion in economic stimulus to the Central Virginia region over the first 10 years of operation, with $504 million in tax revenues and $201 million in annual economic benefits post-opening. The resort will also generate 1,600 permanent jobs — 600 of which are already in place at the temporary Live! Casino Virginia facility — with roles spanning cooks, servers, bartenders, hotel services, and events.
For vendors specifically, the October 14 contractor and vendor fair at the Petersburg Public Library is the first formal entry point into Cordish's procurement pipeline. The event, held in partnership with the Virginia Department of Small Business & Supplier Diversity, will surface opportunities in food and beverage supply, facilities maintenance, hotel and spa products, printing, and professional services. The Cordish Companies have a documented track record of MBE/WBE and veteran-owned business inclusion across their other Live! properties, and the Virginia project is being positioned as a continuation of that model.
For operators benchmarking how integrated resort F&B programs are being structured in 2026 and beyond, the Live! Virginia buildout is a useful reference point. Multi-concept venue clusters anchored by one sports-entertainment bar, one fine-dining steakhouse, and one ethnic cuisine flagship have become a reliable format at casino resorts. The differentiation increasingly comes in how local partnerships fill the remaining slots — and how aggressively the operator sources regionally. Cordish's language around locally grown produce, poultry, and seafood in the Luk Fu concept suggests at least some intentional regional sourcing strategy, though specific distributor relationships have not been disclosed.
Operators and vendors tracking brand launch timelines and retail distribution strategies or monitoring hospitality procurement shifts should note that the property's 70,000-square-foot event center — sized for conventions, nonprofit gatherings, and headline entertainment — will create sustained high-volume catering and beverage demand independent of gaming floor traffic.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
