Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood is moving forward with a new signature restaurant from Major Food Group, the hospitality operator behind CARBONE, Torrisi, and ZZ's Club, replacing the seven-year-old Cipresso outlet that closed July 19. The announcement advances a formal strategic partnership Hard Rock International and MFG established in 2024 to develop exclusive dining concepts across Hard Rock's global portfolio of integrated resorts, hotels, and casinos.
Cipresso's closure triggered an immediate operational pivot: guest favorites — Nonna's Meatballs, Bolognese, and Bone-In Veal Chop Alla Parmigiana — migrated to Abiaka Wood Fire Grill beginning July 27, and Abiaka expanded to seven-day service to absorb the cover count. The move reflects the kind of outlet-level F&B portfolio management increasingly common at large integrated resorts, where cover optimization and revenue-per-available-seat metrics drive outlet consolidation decisions.
The Partnership Logic
For Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood, a 1,271-room flagship property that completed a $1.5 billion expansion in 2019, the MFG relationship is a deliberate play on destination-dining as a driver of non-gaming revenue and guest-stay extension. Integrated resort operators have leaned heavily into marquee F&B partnerships over the past several years as a tool for differentiating the guest experience and supporting premium average daily rate positioning — dynamics that ripple into PMS yield strategies and loyalty program engagement. Hard Rock Chairman and CEO of Seminole Gaming Jim Allen described the new concept as reflecting the property's "continued investment in world-class dining and hospitality."
MFG Co-Founder Jeff Zalaznick framed the collaboration in destination-dining terms: the goal is a restaurant that gives guests "another reason to love Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood for many years to come." That language signals MFG is designing for repeat visitation and loyalty-program stickiness rather than a single-occasion draw — a commercially important distinction for a resort whose gaming floor, 20-plus F&B outlets, and entertainment venue compete directly for guest wallet share.
What Operators Should Watch
The two brands are not new to each other operationally. In December 2023, MFG staged an exclusive CARBONE residency at Cipresso to mark the rollout of live craps, roulette, and retail sports betting at Seminole Gaming properties across Florida — an event designed to drive foot traffic and capture a higher-spend demographic at a pivotal regulatory moment for the property. That residency provided a real-world proof of concept for the deeper, ongoing partnership now being formalized.
For hospitality tech operators and vendors tracking integrated resort F&B strategy, the Hard Rock–MFG structure illustrates how large casino-hotel portfolios are using curated brand partnerships to build dining pipelines that feed into reservation platforms, CRM segmentation, and loyalty tier incentives. The unnamed concept will eventually require a full digital-operations stack — online reservations, table management integration, POS configuration for a high-check-average fine-dining environment, and potentially a dedicated digital-ordering or pre-arrival booking flow tied into the resort's loyalty infrastructure.
Full details on the restaurant's name, culinary direction, design, opening timeline, and reservation system will be announced this fall. Operators and technology vendors eyeing the integrated resort segment can track parallel F&B partnership models at sister publication Food & Beverage Magazine, and follow hospitality loyalty and reservation-platform developments in our coverage of hotel-tech trends and restaurant digital ordering.
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.
