WGM: Billionaire Schultz to Miami, Slim's Opens in Bal Harbor, FB & W Hotels Get Major Upgrades

Plus a Miami Shores Steal for Under 2 Million and Delish Sando's in Coral Gables

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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 3.10.26

Beach Business

• Starbucks Billionaire Howard Schultz Moves to Miami.

  The man who sold the world on coffee just moved to a city with the best iced coffee in the world.

• The Fontainebleau Is Getting a Waterslide. Go Home & Cry.

  Florida lawmakers just handed billionaire Jeffrey Soffer exactly what he wanted.

• New Strip: Billionaire Ruben Bros, Seriously Upgrading the W SoBe

  Billionaire duo are going for approval on a full reimagining of the property

• BAM Score 83 Points, the Heat Break People’s Brains Again

  The second-highest scoring game in the history of professional basketball.

Hospitality Local Insider

• New Opening: Slim’s Bal Harbor, the Restaurant World’s Sure Thing

  “Glamorous, intentional, and effortlessly chic” Starr’s brief for Slim’s.

• The Buzz is Real: Frankie & Wally’s, Coral Gables

  Barely a month in Coral Gables and it’s already selling out by mid-afternoon.

Real Estate

• Real Estate Luxe Listings: Miami Shores Steal, for Under 2 Million

  There is a better version of you, living on a quiet street in Miami Shores

On My Mind: Stop Asking Everyone’s Opinion. Trust Yourself.

Stop asking everyone’s opinion. I mean it. We live in an era where every decision gets focus-grouped, every idea gets workshopped, every instinct gets second-guessed by someone who has never built anything. We call it collaboration. We call it being open-minded. It’s just fear dressed up in polite language. And it kills everything it touches.

The people who built the things worth building didn’t take a poll first. They had a conviction and they ran toward it. Starbucks wasn’t a committee decision. The Fontainebleau wasn’t approved by a neighborhood vote. Every great restaurant, every great building, every great business in this city started with one person who trusted themselves when no one else did yet. That is not arrogance. That is the prerequisite.

Here’s what I’ve learned: the more people you ask, the more diluted the idea becomes. Everyone has an opinion. Most opinions are just someone else’s fear projected onto your dream. Your cousin thinks it’s risky. Your friend thinks the timing is off. Your colleague thinks you should wait. None of them are lying to you. They’re just not you. They don’t have your vision. They don’t feel what you feel when you think about what this thing could become.

The truly dangerous move isn’t launching before you’re ready. It’s waiting so long for consensus that the window closes and you spend the rest of your life explaining why you almost did something great.

Miami was not built by people who waited for permission. This is the wild west. This city rewards the ones who move. Trust yourself. Make the call. The opinion you need most is your own.

BEACH BUSINESS

Starbucks Billionaire Howard Schultz Moves to Miami. Thank God We Have the Best Iced Coffee in the World.

The man who built the world's most famous coffee brand just became our neighbor. Miami was ready. Howard Schultz, the man who turned a single Seattle coffee shop into a global empire, has moved to Miami. He and his wife paid $44 million for a five-bedroom penthouse at the Four Seasons Surf Club in Surfside, left 40 years in Seattle behind, and announced the whole thing on LinkedIn with the comments disabled. We’ll take it. Welcome to the neighborhood, Howard.

The move is by now a familiar story. Miami has become the city that serious people choose when they’re done with everywhere else. The weather, the energy, the density of ambition, it adds up. Every billionaire who picks Miami is a vote of confidence in this city. We accept every vote.

But here’s what nobody is talking about. Schultz built his entire career on one insight: that people don’t just want coffee, they want an experience. A place. A feeling they come back to every morning. He was right. He built Starbucks into one of the most recognized brands on earth proving it.

And now he’s retired, right around the corner from Sunshine Coffee.

Sunshine Coffee is Miami’s own. Independent, locally built, rooted on Española Way in Miami Beach with a second location coming to North Beach. No corporate playbook. No seasonal gimmicks. Just the best iced coffee in the world and a brand born from this city. Schultz spent four decades chasing the idea of what a great coffee experience could feel like. We built it here.

Howard, whenever you’re ready, we’ll have one waiting.

The WGM Take: The man who sold the world on coffee just moved to a city with the best iced coffee in the world. Some things are just meant to be.

The Fontainebleau Is Getting a Waterslide. Go Home & Cry.

Florida lawmakers just handed billionaire Jeffrey Soffer exactly what he wanted. A new state measure, drafted with help from a Fontainebleau lobbyist, forces cities to automatically approve certain variances for large destination resorts, effectively letting the Fontainebleau bypass Miami Beach’s Historic Preservation Board entirely. The board had delayed a vote three times. Residents packed city commission chambers with anti-water park signs. The mayor went on record opposing it. None of it mattered. The measure passed 20-17.