As a child, Ryan Simonetti would visit furniture stores and antique shops with his mom. Those visits he once considered a nuisance turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the co-founder and CEO of Convene, a high-end events hosting and flexible workplace provider with some big-name investors.

“My mom used to torture me and drag me around with her,” Simonetti, 40, said in an interview. “She was really into design. ... I think there’s something about that I kind of picked up as a kid. I developed a good eye for quality. … I never went to school for architecture, design or anything, but I picked up a really good natural sense for space and dimension. ... My team would say that I’m an architect and designer trapped in a finance guy’s body.”

With those traits, Simonetti — who started his career at the former Lehman Brothers’ real estate group before moving to an investment firm with such responsibilities as investing in hotels and office buildings — had a lightbulb moment well over a decade ago when he saw an opportunity to create something that he said didn’t exist in the market. That led to the 2009 birth of New York-based Convene, known for the design flair of its space often housed in top-tier office towers.

“Nobody had put the two together,” he told CoStar News. In the early- to mid-2000s, “you could see lifestyle and experience was going to bleed across every asset class in every industry, and nobody had brought it to office yet. So the question was, ‘What if you ran an office like a hotel?’… There wasn’t an office developer talking about bringing this to an office building in 2009. … Convene was the first to pioneer the concept before others caught up.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic-driven remote working trend has increased demand for flexible work space, Convene is competing in an increasingly crowded field against rivals such as industry giant IWG, WeWork and Industrious. However, different from its rivals, analysts have said Convene space has an advantage in its specialty of hosting meetings and conference events with an on-site kitchen.

These days, hospitality-style management and amenities are a common pitch by landlords and coworking firms of all kinds. Amid increased demand for its full-service meeting and event space, Convene in 2018 expanded to flexible workplaces, which is a fast-growing part of the business and has grown to 20% of total revenue, according to Simonetti, who still doesn’t see a direct rival competing against what the company does. He expects the flexible workplace business to eventually become half of the company’s total.

The firm’s largest location, spanning 116,000 square feet over four floors at 530 Fifth Ave. in midtown Manhattan, is a telling example of what sets it apart, according to Simonetti. Designed to give the vibe of a high-end hotel, there is a large kitchen run by an executive chef who leads a team of just under 20 serving farm-to-table culinary offerings, not just for the Convene space but for the catering needs of the entire building.

Also at the site, there is on-demand tech support for the 70,000-square-foot event and meeting space; an Eden Health primary care doctor’s office; a gym giving individual training and group fitness classes by wellness provider Hydra Studios; and an in-house barista. Communal flexible workspaces and private office suites serve some 800 members and house startups including the U.S. headquarters of U.K. restaurant chain Wagamama and the New York headquarters of San Francisco-based lodging provider Sonder.

Convene is a “premium full-service brand,” just like in the hotel industry, Simonetti said, adding traditional coworking companies such as WeWork don’t provide the same level of service. When it comes to hotel guests, “there’s a huge segment of the market that’s willing to stay at a Hilton Garden or Courtyard by Marriott. For Convene, we’re a JW Marriott or a Ritz-Carlton. ... There’s not a competitor in the premium segment of the market. We stand alone.”

That formula has helped Convene attract investors including real estate owners Brookfield Properties and RXR Realty as well as Revolution, a Washington, D.C.-based investment firm started by Steve Case, the former CEO of early internet trailblazer AOL. Revolution is also an investor behind popular concepts such as the Sweetgreen and Cava fast-casual restaurant chains.

“The future of the commercial real estate industry is evolving from simply providing office space to providing full-service, flexible solutions for companies that want to attract and retain the best talent,” Scott Rechler, CEO of RXR, said in a statement in 2018, when Convene secured $152 million in Series D financing led by ArrowMark Partners along with RXR and Revolution. “Convene has been at the forefront of understanding and shaping its offering to address the fast-changing demands from established companies for innovative workplace solutions. As a landlord partner with Convene in multiple properties, we have seen firsthand how they both fill a market void for corporate clients as well as provide an extraordinary amenity for building owners.”

Convene in April said it landed an investment from HBC, the Toronto-based parent of department stores Hudson’s Bay and Saks Fifth Avenue, and global investment firm Ares Management. As part of the deal, Convene will operate HBC’s existing portfolio of SaksWorks flexible work, event, restaurant and meeting spaces, three of which have been rebranded as SaksWorks by Convene, according to Convene’s website.

Convene is helping HBC, which Simonetti said is now Convene’s largest shareholder, to redevelop and manage an additional 18 locations, including former Saks and Lord & Taylor stores, in the next five years. Those redevelopment projects are equal to 2.4 million square feet of space as part of HBC’s plan to redesign about 12 million square feet, he said.

The sites Convene will open for HBC are not just located in big cities including New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Canada’s Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. They are in suburbs such as Garden City on New York’s Long Island and Stamford, Connecticut, according to Simonetti.

HBC’s investment totals about $300 million in equity and debt capital, Simonetti said. The retail holding company is also helping to pay for the build-out costs of Convene locations at its properties, he said, adding Convene will be paid a management fee. To date, Convene has raised just north of $560 million in capital, a spokesperson told CoStar News.

Simonetti said Convene is also working with other Class A office developers. Including those through the HBC partnership, Convene plans to open a total of “30-something locations” over the next 30 months in 17 markets that will include new markets such as Austin and Dallas in Texas, and Atlanta, he said. Convene has 24 locations with 12 in its largest market of New York, according to its website. It has expanded to Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Greenwich, Connecticut.

The company in May opened its first international location in London’s new 22 Bishopsgate, the second-tallest building in the city. The arrangement at the 62-story office tower is another example of Convene’s working with landlords to become “the amenity for the rest of the building,” Simonetti said. Because of its presence, all of the building’s tenants, counting many Fortune 100 companies and other major firms, opted not to build their own meeting and event space as they will outsource those needs to Convene, he said.

Convene in April reopened Club 75, its private members-only work and social club located on the top floor of 75 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan. First launched in 2019, the club was closed for two years because of the pandemic. With an annual membership of $1,250, Club 75 features a private restaurant with a kitchen and chef. There’s a bar, work lounge, pool table and artwork including authentic pieces by Pablo Picasso and Alexander Calder.

Raised in Hillsborough, New Jersey, a town about an hour’s drive outside of Manhattan, Simonetti was the first in his family to attend college, graduating from Villanova University with a degree in finance and economics. At Lehman Brothers, he helped structure commercial mortgage-backed securities before moving on to Gramercy Capital, which he said was funded by Manhattan’s largest office landlord, SL Green Realty. There he helped restructure a billion-dollar loan portfolio including $600 million of hospitality-related real estate investments before getting the urge to build his own business.

“As a kid, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur,” he said, adding his father was a small-business entrepreneur and owned a bread delivery business. “Since I’ve been a kid, me and my friends all worked in delivering pizzas. We worked at Friendly’s. We did dishwashing. I worked in hospitality my whole life.”

These days, Simonetti counts fishing, golfing, hot yoga and muay thai boxing among activities he does to destress and help him face challenges such as high inflation, especially when it comes to rising food and labor costs. Convene’s food and office catering business serves “hundreds of thousands” of people a year with some locations even serving some 2,000 people a day, Simonetti said. Pre-pandemic, the food and beverage segment alone generated about $100 million in revenue, or 40% of Convene’s about $250 million in total revenue, he said, adding increasing build-out costs are also an obstacle in the current economy.

Meanwhile, like many other workplace providers, Convene is recovering from the fallout of the pandemic. While both its office and event businesses have seen fast pickups, Simonetti said he expects total revenue won’t return to the pre-COVID level until next year. The company always has been “significantly profitable at the unit level” and was profitable before the pandemic, he said, and it’s working its way back.

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, Simonetti isn't fazed. He said landlords seeking to meet changing workplace demands since the onset of the pandemic are a lot more accommodating these days with the way deal terms are structured. More have asked Convene to manage their meeting and flexible space offerings. “There’s never been a better time to transact,” he said.

In addition to managing space for landlords such as HBC and leasing some on its own, Convene is open to buying properties to develop space, similar to how big retailers such as Walmart own some of their own real estate, Simonetti said. And he is open to the idea of Convene one day becoming a publicly traded company.

“HBC is in the business of making money, and so is Ares,” he said. “At some point, there’s going to have to be a path to liquidity. We have a lot of options. We’ve got so much cash right now. … We’ll be opportunistic … where it makes sense to either raise more money privately or publicly. Convene will be a billion-dollar company. … Once you get there, you have a lot of options.”