- May 23, 2025
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After long careers in the hospitality and restaurant industries, Corinne Ryan and Veljko Pavicevic felt ready to venture out on their own.
Now, a decade in, the married couple who started out as business partners, have a thriving, uber-luxury restaurant business in Naples, overcoming some rough funding spots early on and then, of course, the pandemic. The menu includes one thriving restaurant; an uber-luxury private members-only business and dining club; and two more specialized high-end concepts on the way, one Japanese and one French. It’s a long way from when they opened Sails Restaurant in 2015, selling everything they owned at the time to make it happen.
Pavicevic grew up in Serbia and attended Naples High School as an exchange student. He worked as a server in his younger days, then embarked on a career in management with Ritz-Carlton after graduating from Florida Gulf Coast University. In 2009, he created his own international trading company and luxury hospitality consultancy. Ryan, meanwhile, worked for years as a high-end food broker, first in Australia and later in the U.S.
When the business partners began conceiving of Sails Restaurant in 2015, they had a lot of experience from which to draw. “We saw an opportunity in the market where there was a population that greatly appreciates excellence,” says Ryan, 45. “And we felt that with our grounding in luxury hospitality, we saw an opening for that here in Naples.”
Ryan’s connections meant they could procure top-notch, highly allocated products from all over the world for Sails Restaurant, things like exotic wild seafood and single-farm wagyu beef from Australia. “And I don’t know service any other way except impeccable,” says Pavicevic, 44. “With Corinne’s background of product excellence, that’s really how we built the DNA of our baby, Sails.”
They opened Sails Restaurant in Naples in February 2018. They celebrated another milestone in 2022, when they got married.
With Sails Restaurant, they were fortunate enough to have already developed a loyal clientele when the pandemic hit. They made it a priority to keep their team on, transitioning to making meals that they donated for staff at the local hospitals.
As a luxury hospitality outlet, wine was an important component of their offerings. With no diners coming in, they pivoted to take advantage of Covid-inspired changes to Florida law allowing restaurants to sell alcohol off-premises.
“When we opened up Sails, we started creating detailed profiles of the guests, which allowed us to know their preferences, phone numbers and email addresses,” says Pavicevic. “We started an internal call center and followed up on all of our regulars, and within a week we started selling an extremely high volume of wine.”
The upheaval of the pandemic also presented them with an opportunity. In April 2020, they purchased the building where they’ve opened what’s now their second venture, Butcher Private. The pair, through an LLC, paid $2 million for the building at 2380 Vanderbilt Beach Road, Collier County property records show.
Pavicevic calls owning your own restaurant space “the holy grail” for hospitality entrepreneurs, giving you a physical entity for your business beyond just the restaurant concept. (The Sails Restaurant space is leased.) “Once you own real estate, you’re investing in your future and retirement,” he says.
They originally thought about opening a casual burger bar in that space. But after listening to their customers at Sails, they did a 180 and created the private, members-only business club.
Naples attracts a lot of former CEOs and other successful businesspeople, and the couple learned they wanted a place to come together with others who share similar business backgrounds and interests in high-end pursuits. “We learned from them there is a need to form a community,” says Pavicevic. Memberships are invitation only.
Butcher Private inspires the couple and their team members to keep upping their game — a lesson learned in employee retention, that stars want to work with stars. “It allows the team to develop an even higher level of excellence,” says Pavicevic. “Our members travel the world and dine in the best of the best restaurants and stay in the best hotels. They’re used to all top-level quality, impeccable service, and product excellence.”
And that’s what both businesses are always striving to deliver amid all the obstacles. “The last eight years have been tremendously challenging,” says Pavicevic. “But at the same time, we’re so grateful for these experiences, because they taught us how to focus on daily improvement. The DNA of our company is every single day, we work on improvements.”
Now the couple is embarking on their next ventures. First up is Omasava, a 14-seat omakase restaurant set to open this spring. That will be followed by Sava, an elegant French farm-to-table concept inspired by Pavicevic’s grandmother, aiming for an early October opening.
The employees, the couple say, are also a major success driver. “What changed our business is when we stopped hiring and started recruiting,” says Pavicevic. “To work with us, a high level of discipline is needed. These individuals have a high level of passion and love enjoying luxury hospitality themselves.”
The couple declined to share information about the investment made in their businesses or annual revenue figures. But they opened Sails Restaurant without any bank loans or investors, and then sold everything they owned to pay for it.
“It was not by choice,” says Pavicevic. “The original GC who worked with us on the project gave us estimates, and those went 3X, so we were forced to sell everything. When we received the certificate of occupancy, we had literally two weeks of funding left. If we did not receive it, this would never have opened.”
Now they’re glad to be on their own. “If we were not 100% in, there would have been many reasons to walk away in the first couple of years,” says Ryan. “We are dedicated to having this as just the two of us.”
“We feel as if our loyal guests are the investors,” says Pavicevic. “They keep coming back and investing in experiences with us — and we hold 100% equity.”
