The Guest House Opens in Scottsdale as RDM Hospitality Ramps Up Expansion

The Guest House, a scene-making modern American steakhouse known for its prime tomahawk, caviar-topped tuna cones, theatrical cocktails, dramatic tableside presentations and over-the-top desserts in Austin and Las Vegas, will open in Scottsdale on Friday, January 9.

The new Arizona restaurant, where chef Todd Mark Miller will serve spicy rigatoni, wagyu pastrami and crowd-pleasing buttermilk chicken tenders, is taking over the former Etta space at Scottsdale Quarter. It’s part of the rapid expansion of RDM Hospitality, which in 2024 debuted The Guest House Austin and opened The Guest House Las Vegas with funding from restaurant-financing powerhouse inKind. 

The Guest House, which has served guests including Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Aaron Rodgers, Conor McGregor, Kevin Hart, Dasha, Ella Balinska, Steve Aoki and Gordon Ramsay in Austin and Las Vegas, is a restaurant brand that blends destination dining and nightlife in a setting that’s comfortable and not stuffy. DJs, including nightclub headliners like Cedric Gervais, Francis Mercier, Chantel Jeffries, 15 Grams and Dimitri, set the tone every night, but dinner is the main event. 

RDM CEO Raj Kumar tells Observer that there are plans to open Guest House locations in Dallas, Houston and Denver.

“Having inKind support RDM has helped us open three restaurants in less than two years and gives us the confidence to scale to the next three because we have the best financing and non-dilutive capital,” Kumar says.

Instead of giving loans or taking equity, inKind funds restaurants by pre-purchasing food and beverage credit at a discount and then selling this credit to customers on its app.

RDM Hospitality is a thriving business, but it’s also a side project for founder Johann Moonesinghe and partner David Mulugheta, who both have extremely prominent day jobs. Moonesinghe is co-founder and CEO of inKind, which recently raised $450 million in capital from backers including Magnetar and Jay-Z and Robbie Robinson’s MarcyPen. In 2024, Mulugheta, who is president of team sports at management firm Athletes First, became the first agent to negotiate more than $1 billion in NFL contracts in a single year. 

“RDM is about learning how to operate profitable restaurants, and we take those learnings and teach them back to the restaurants that are part of inKind,” Moonesinghe tells Observer.

When The Guest House opened in Austin on February 18, 2024, inKind had funded 1,407 restaurants. On Tuesday, when Observer spoke to Moonesinghe, that number had grown to 5,756 restaurants. Moonesinghe says his goal at inKind is to fund another 8,000 restaurants in 2026.

Before inKind purchased the Etta restaurant group out of bankruptcy, Etta Scottsdale was generating about $400,000 a month in revenue. Moonesinghe credits Kumar for increasing the revenue to more than $1 million a month at Etta Scottsdale, but then RDM realized it had an even better asset in The Guest House.

“The most important part of RDM is for us to learn, and what we’ve learned is that it’s really hard to build multiple brands at scale,” Moonesinghe says. “And Guest House is such a successful brand and we have so much opportunity to scale it that we decided to focus on just the Guest House brand. We expect to open our Dallas location later this year and then two more locations next year.”

Mulugheta, who has spearheaded Guest House activations including a Super Bowl pop-up in New Orleans and “celebrity waiter nights” with NFL players like Micah Parsons and CJ Stroud moonlighting as servers and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity, likes having a lively, welcoming and safe place where he can send clients and friends. 

“The first time I walked into Guest House, it was something different than anything we had in the city of Austin,” Mulugheta says. “Johann and Raj have created a place that has phenomenal food and phenomenal service, and the vibe is even better. You get a mix of people from all different backgrounds. There’s a cultural intersection. And Raj has been super intentional on who he’s hired. It’s like that TV show, Cheers. Everybody knows your name. This isn’t somewhere where you come to dinner once every six months. It’s somewhere that you want to be anytime you have some free time. It’s really a community.” 

“The focus is on building a social dining experience,” Kumar says. “We’ve created a place with a broad, approachable menu where people can go three times a week and have three different meals while enjoying the music and the vibe.”

Scottsdale, where Catch recently opened and where Din Tai Fung and Boa Steakhouse are on the way, is a booming restaurant market that will likely welcome this vibe. InKind already works with several Scottsdale destinations, including Toca Madera, Élephante, Bottled Blonde, 40 Love and Zinque. Moonesinghe’s goal with RDM is to cultivate customers who regularly support multiple restaurants. 

“We’re not competing with all these restaurants that inKind funds,” Moonesinghe says. “What happens is we get a lot of people coming into Guest House who we then send to the other restaurants in our network. It’s important that we help build the ecosystem in these cities.”

Kumar and Mulugheta echo this rising-tide sentiment.

“Over the last two years, we’ve seen an increasing number of high-value guests,” Kumar says. “When we look at our reservations, we see that inKind users tend to spend a lot more.” 

Mulugheta tells his clients to download the inKind app to see what restaurants they should frequent when they’re on the road.

“They’re definitely looking at the app to see where their next meal is,” he says.

They can also peruse the app to see where to drink and where to party, given that inKind also funds bars and nightclubs. RDM is working to debut its new Guest Room concept in Las Vegas, a cocktail spot/ultra lounge attached to Guest House, which will also open in Dallas, Houston and Denver.

“This isn’t just about dinner,” Kumar says of his plans at Guest House and RDM. “It’s about an experience that builds.”