Paul and Wendy Hamilton, owners of Hamilton Hospitality, are stepping out of the spotlight, albeit slowly. The husband-and-wife team has made arrangements to sell Eleven Eleven Mississippi, their 21-year-old, two-level flagship restaurant in Lafayette Square, to Jason Arnold, the company’s longtime managing partner. Eleven Eleven specializes in scratch made Tuscan-Californian cuisine and over the years has won a host of awards for its food, wine, atmosphere, and value.
In addition to Eleven Eleven Mississippi, Hamilton Hospitality currently operates Hamilton’s Urban Steakhouse & Bourbon Bar, Winnie’s Wine Bar, and two event venues, Rhone Rum Bar and The Garage. (Vin de Set, 21st Street Brewer’s Bar, PW Pizza, and additional banquet spaces were lost in a fire in September 2022.)
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A new LLC for Eleven Eleven Mississippi has been established, a new liquor license is in the works, and the complete transfer to Arnold is expected to occur by year’s end. All parties say that no significant changes are planned.
The Backstory
The Hamiltons’ restaurant career has been a long and winding road—“more like a roller coaster, depending on the day,” Paul says.
The couple met in their 20s while working for St. Louis–based Clipper Cruise Line and parlayed that experience to establishing a multi-unit restaurant company that at one time included eight restaurants and a handful of private event venues.
The company survived several economic downturns and adopted an Employee Stock Ownership Plan in 2019. The company endured a pandemic and then a major fire, which was the catalyst for subsequent changes.
“We established the ESOP so that Wendy and I could step back and leave the business in the capable hands of our employees,” Paul explains, though the situation changed once the fire destroyed the Vin de Set building. “When we set up the ESOP, we had sales of $12 million per year, which could justify the $100,000 per year in administration costs. After the fire and we lost several restaurants, sales plummeted, but the administration fees did not, so something needed to change.”
In mid-November 2023, the Hamiltons bought out the ESOP (by paying employees fair market value for their stock) and set up a standard S-corporation for Eleven Eleven Mississippi. At the same time, the Hamiltons’ life took a turn. “People around us, in our age group, began suffering from severe illnesses and passing away,” Paul says, “which prompted some re-evaluative soul-searching.
“The way I saw it, Wendy and I had four options,” Paul continues. “Close the restaurant, which we would never do because it’s extremely profitable; keep doing what we’d been doing, which, like I said, Wendy and I no longer wanted to do; sell it to an outsider, which wouldn’t be fair to the employees and would likely put Jason out of a job; or offer it to Jason. So it was a pretty easy decision.”
Arnold already owns 40 percent of Hamilton’s and Winnie’s, Paul adds. “By the time he gets to the age when he wants to retire, he’ll have accumulated a lot more equity and be in a position to retire, which is exactly where Wendy and I are right now,” says Paul. “We’ll still be involved—as consultants, advisors, and partners in Hamilton’s and Winnie’s—but Jason will hold the baton.”
The Hamiltons announced the news at a manager’s party on Cinco de Mayo (“the Christmas party we never got around to,” Paul admits). Ironically, he adds, the biggest concern was about who was going to make the birthday cakes, “which Wendy had been doing for years and vowed to keep doing.”
The Future
For his part, Arnold says he was surprised when Paul approached him, “but more than that, I was honored,” he says. “I saw it as a testament to the way that Paul and Wendy have always run their businesses—the right way. After 20 years, a lot of owners would have backed off, coasted along, and not have been there as much as they needed to be. But they were always there, setting an example. That’s how they’re wired.”
Asked if any changes are planned, Arnold says he and the Hamiltons always approached change as a team. “Anything we wanted to do, we did collectively,” he says. “There’s nothing on my list of projects that didn’t get done. Little things will continue to come up—we just bought 100 new chairs, for example—and I will continue to tweak here and there.”
Arnold’s career has been an interesting one as well. “My biography would be called Managing a Shipwreck,” he says. “It all started when I was working in Alaska on a cruise ship called the Yorktown Clipper, which hit a charted rock at high tide, the only rock within miles, and we all had to abandon ship. I thought that might be the most interesting experience of my life, until I got into the restaurant business. Then I survived a pandemic—which was like a slow shipwreck—and then a major fire, which was a super fast one.” Keeping the metaphor alive, he adds, “I can only hope that clearer sailing is ahead.”
It appears that way for the Hamiltons, who say they’re going to travel more—a lot more. “Like most people,” Paul says, “we say we’re going to do that, but this time we really are. Wendy and I have taken a few small cruises recently, and we’ve been happier than we’ve ever been. It made us feel like we were in our 20s, because that’s when she and I met: in our 20s, running cruise ships.”
