Playboy Bets $12.5 Million on a Miami Beach Members Club, and the Broken Shaker's Future Hangs in the Balance
Playboy, which is moving its headquarters to Miami Beach, plans to convert the Freehand into a members-only club run by Think Hospitality. The contract calls for terminating the agreement with the Bro
MIAMI BEACH — Playboy wants a clubhouse in its new hometown, and it has picked one of Miami Beach’s best-known hangouts to build it.
The company has signed a deal to buy the Freehand Miami, the hotel at 2701, 2727 and 2731 Indian Creek Drive, for $12.5 million and plans to turn it into a private members club, Bisnow reported, citing a Nov. 5 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Playboy’s third-quarter earnings call. The sale is expected to close Dec. 15.
The catch for Miami’s bar scene: the purchase agreement requires the hotel’s owner to terminate its existing bar agreement by closing, Miami New Times reported. That bar is the Broken Shaker, the poolside cocktail spot that has called the property home for nearly 15 years.
What Playboy is buying, and why
The Freehand has 89 rooms, according to 5AM Miami. On the earnings call, Playboy CEO Ben Kohn described the property as five buildings around a central courtyard and pool, New Times reported.
“The new club will be a foundational piece of our hospitality strategy,” Kohn said on the call, as quoted by Bisnow.
He framed the deal as a fit with the company’s licensing-first approach. “We continue to pursue our asset-light business model and strategy in which Playboy brand serves as the foundation for licensing, media and hospitality,” Kohn said. “Given the potential licensing revenue and profit share opportunity, we felt it is a better use of our cash in the short term than the share repurchase we were contemplating.”
Playboy plans to spend about $5 million from its balance sheet on the acquisition, an amount it expects membership sales to replenish, according to Bisnow. 5AM Miami, citing The Real Deal, reported that Playboy also signed a non-binding term sheet for a joint venture with unnamed third-party investors.
Kohn named Think Hospitality as the proposed club operator and Infinity Collective as the proposed developer, New Times reported. Think Hospitality’s South Beach portfolio includes the Esmé hotel and the Plymouth.
The seller is an entity tied to London-based Generator, which bought the hotel in 2012 for $12 million, according to Miami-Dade property appraiser records cited by Bisnow.
A brand moving to Miami Beach
The club is part of a broader relocation. Playboy announced in August 2025 that it was moving its headquarters from Los Angeles to a 20,000-square-foot office in Robert Rivani’s “Class-X” office building on Michigan Avenue in Miami Beach, Bisnow reported. On a third-quarter 2025 earnings call, Kohn said the company planned an exclusive private club “designed to be as iconic as the original Playboy Mansion.”
The brand has Miami Beach history, too. Hugh Hefner founded the short-lived Playboy Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach in 1972, according to a timeline published by 5AM Miami.
The Broken Shaker question
For locals, the bigger story may be the bar out back.
Bar Lab’s Gabriel Orta and Elad Zvi opened the Broken Shaker as a six-month pop-up at the old Indian Creek Hotel in early 2012, according to New Times. By December of that year, the hotel had become the Freehand and the Shaker reopened as a permanent bar. In 2015, Tales of the Cocktail named it Best American Hotel Bar, and the concept later opened in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.
Its alumni went on to shape Miami’s drinking scene. Ben Potts opened Beaker & Gray in Wynwood and later co-founded the beverage consultancy Unfiltered Hospitality with former Broken Shaker manager Gui Jaroschy, and Brian Griffiths went on to open Over Under downtown, New Times reported.
The bar has changed hands before. Bar Lab sold the Broken Shaker to Generator in 2024, and New York’s Authentic Hospitality took over operations that year, according to New Times.
What happens next is unclear. Kohn did not say what Think Hospitality or Infinity Collective would do with the Broken Shaker, and New Times said it had not heard back from the bar’s press team. The contract requires the seller to give written notice that the bar agreement is ending, but whether the bar closes by Dec. 15 or continues under a new arrangement has not been announced. 5AM Miami also listed the fate of Ray’s Hometown Bar, another bar at the Freehand, as unresolved, and noted that the hotel was still taking bookings through November 2027.
As of Nov. 11, the Broken Shaker’s website still listed regular service Thursday through Sunday, New Times reported.
Why it matters
The deal tests how far Playboy’s licensing-first strategy can stretch into hospitality, with outside partners lined up to develop and run the club. Playboy is putting in about $5 million of its own cash and counting on membership sales to earn it back. If the deal closes as planned, a poolside bar where New Times says anyone could pull up a chair with a cocktail would become part of a members-only club.