Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood is replacing its long-running Cipresso restaurant with an as-yet-unnamed signature concept developed by Major Food Group, the hospitality company behind CARBONE, Torrisi, ZZ's Club, and more than fifty venues across fifteen cities. The announcement advances a formal partnership between Hard Rock International and MFG established in 2024 to build exclusive dining experiences across Hard Rock's global portfolio of integrated resorts, hotels, and casinos.
Cipresso closed July 19 after seven years of service. Its most popular dishes — Nonna's Meatballs, Bolognese, and Bone-In Veal Chop Alla Parmigiana — have been folded into the menu at Abiaka Wood Fire Grill, which also expanded to seven-day-a-week service to absorb the demand.
What the Partnership Signals
For resort and casino operators, the move is a study in how integrated hospitality properties are rethinking their F&B mix. Rather than building proprietary dining programs in-house, Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood is licensing creative authority to a best-in-class external operator — a model that mirrors what high-end hotel brands have been doing with celebrity chef partnerships for a decade, now evolving toward brand-level equity deals. MFG brings an existing global audience, a recognizable design sensibility, and earned editorial cachet (the group was named one of GQ's "20 Most Creative Companies in the World") that a property-built concept would take years to replicate.
The relationship has a track record. In December 2023, MFG brought a Carbone residency to Cipresso to mark the historic introduction of craps, roulette, and sports betting at Seminole Gaming properties across Florida — a proof-of-concept that apparently justified deepening the arrangement into a permanent footprint.
What Operators Should Watch
The details that matter most — restaurant name, culinary direction, design renderings, opening timeline, and reservation structure — are all reserved for a fall announcement. That staged disclosure is itself a deliberate brand-launch strategy: it extends earned media across multiple news cycles and allows MFG to control the narrative around concept identity before competitive properties can respond.
For food and beverage directors and resort operators evaluating their own dining portfolios, the Seminole Hard Rock move raises a practical procurement question: when does it make more sense to license a proven hospitality brand than to develop and staff a new concept from scratch? MFG's portfolio gives Hard Rock a built-in guest recognition advantage, a tested supply chain for its core ingredients, and a management culture already optimized for high-volume luxury service.
Properties carrying underperforming signature restaurants — particularly those in casino, resort, or hotel environments competing for destination dining share — should read this as a signal that the third-party brand-partnership model is moving from exception to expectation in the upper tier of integrated hospitality. The real operational lift is in integration: aligning reservation systems, staffing models, and F&B margin structures with a partner whose brand standards were built for standalone urban flagship restaurants, not resort volume. That integration challenge is where operators will need clear contractual frameworks and dedicated project management before the doors open.
For vendors, designers, and culinary consultants tracking where premium F&B investment is flowing, South Florida's casino resort corridor — anchored by a $1.5 billion-expanded property with more than 20 food and beverage outlets — represents an active procurement environment worth monitoring. See also our coverage of brand launch considerations for hotel F&B concepts and how integrated resorts are restructuring dining portfolios.
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.
