Duro Hospitality unveils new Mexican restaurant in the Design District – its third opening in 2022

Dallas-based Duro Hospitality has launched a new Mexican concept in the Design District. Called El Carlos Elegante, it’s the group’s sixth concept and third to open this year, joining Italian-inspired coffee and cocktail party Café Duro in Lower Greenville and Casa Duro, a set of three apartments above the cafe listed on AirBnb.

El Carlos Elegante is Duro’s first venture outside of Italian and Mediterranean cuisine, and will offer large, premium cuts of meat and fish, Argentinian-style, wood-fired, a large selection of crudo, homemade tortillas and masa dishes. The bar will feature an extensive Mezcal program, including natural, additive-free options. Menu highlights will include: beef aguachile, hummus maya, pork al pasteur, and more.

“We’re mixing things up with the opening of El Carlos,” said Duro Hospitality co-founder Benji Homsey. “Not only are we bringing the Duro Hospitality touch to Latin cuisine in Dallas, but we’ve also colored outside the lines in terms of the design of the space. Each of our concepts has unique personalities, and El Carlos represents a new character in our portfolio, whose story is told throughout the design of the space as well as depicted on the menu.

The group is well known for embracing interior design, an effort spearheaded by two of its four co-founders, Ross and Corbin See of Sees Design. For El Carlos Elegante, the inspiration came from a Mexican hacienda passed down from generation to generation. Designed to give the impression that the last redecoration took place in the middle of the last century, the space features mid-century modern pieces, unexpected color combinations and an eclectic mix of textiles. Details, finishes and materials, furniture sourced almost exclusively from Mexico, also add authentic touches.

“Our vision for this project was similar to Sister in some ways,” says Corbin. “We wanted it to be multi-generational and comfortable. The space has a residential feel to it and we aimed for the pieces to feel brought together and added over time. The dishes, for example, are not all matched. It’s an eclectic mix, so it feels replaced over time.

The Sees also collaborated with Dallas-based design firm Nunzio Marc Desantis Architects on the project. “Nunzio and Marc DeSantis were instrumental in marrying the architectural features with the cultural, historical and geographic elements that we considered when designing the personality of El Carlos,” adds Ross.

The entrance to El Carlos Elegante features a courtyard with an oversized fireplace and a retractable roof. The restaurant space features custom wallpaper, El Carlos “family portraits” and ironwork in the main dining room, as well as a second fireplace. The private dining room houses a custom Pierre Frey mural and opens to the backyard, which also features a retractable roof and custom fountain.

Earlier this year, Duro unveiled his plans will soon open another restaurant, a European concept in the historic old Highland Park Soda and Pharmacy building on Travis and Knox streets.

Stellar housekeeping market raises $20 million

Dallas-based Stellar, which provides a technology-driven marketplace for property managers and contractors to address maintenance issues, closed a $20 million Series B funding round. The round was led by Tampa-based Weatherford Capital, with San Francisco-based Brick & Mortar Ventures, Austin-based S3 Ventures, Charleston-based Alerion Ventures and Beverly Hills-based Navigate Ventures.

In total, the company has now raised $35 million. The new funding will be directed towards improving the technology and expanding into new US markets. By the end of 2023, Stellar also plans to double its workforce.

“This funding will allow us to meet growing demand from our maintenance market, evolve to more agile technology, including a new mobile app, and expand our talent and market reach,” said Dustin Marx, Founder and CEO.

Stellar serves 10 of the top 11 single-family rental operators in over 150,000 properties. To date, the company has created work for over 8,000 contractors and solved over 200,000 maintenance issues for residents and property managers.

Frisco’s XR Sports Group Joins Mastercard Startup Program

Frisco-based XR Sports Group has been selected by Mastercard as one of five companies to participate in its Start Path program, a virtual initiative that enables early startups to grow rapidly. Since 2014, more than 250 startups have participated in the program, and collectively the companies have raised more than $5 billion since the program began.

Mastercard designed the program to work with companies that have an enterprise use case. XR Sports Group was one of 1,500 applicants to Start Path. The company’s platform sits at the intersection of the creator and fintech economy, which is a specific area of ​​focus for Mastercard.

XR Sports has created site frameworks that allow professional sports teams and influencers who use sites for personal branding and marketing to have exclusive ownership of their content and data. Cole compares it to a real estate investment trust. “If you buy an asset and you don’t own the mining rights, you don’t own everything on that asset,” he says. “Value will be retained in land and mineral rights.”

XR Sports Group creates revenue streams through digital commerce and building personalized communities for clients such as the Dallas Mavericks, Conference USA, Good Good Golf, Southwestern Athletic Conference, and more.

Through this program, CEO Kedreon Cole hopes to create new technology for XR Sports’ “website builder for original content creators” platform. XR Sports Group also consolidated its partnerships with Google, Accenture and Mastercard to accelerate the adoption of its platform by sports and media properties.

“We’ve done a good job of developing corporate relationships that help de-risk our platform to some degree,” Cole said. “Having Mastercard’s support for innovative solutions such as microtransactions is an incredible win for XR. In 2023, we will look to showcase the solutions we are building with Mastercard and expand our customer relationships with a focus on sports groups and corporate media.

Cognizant acquires consulting firm DFW AustinCSI

Cognizant, a NASDAQ-listed IT consulting and services company, has acquired AustinCSI, a Dallas-based consulting firm specializing in enterprise cloud consulting and data analytics services for Fortune 500 clients. of Dallas of Clearsight Advisors, led by Gretchen Frary Seay, advised AustinCSI on the acquisition.

“We are excited about the opportunity to be part of Cognizant and combine our strengths to deliver advanced and transformative technologies to customers,” said Karen Moree, CEO and co-founder of AustinCSI. “Together, we can deliver greater impact to our current customers with broader capabilities in emerging digital technologies and reach a broader market by leveraging Cognizant’s global scale.”

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2022.

New female-owned private jet factories in Southlake

A North Texas women’s group acquired Stella Jets, a company founded in Detroit, Michigan, and moved its operations to Southlake. Stella Jets, an on-demand luxury travel company, partners with nearly 3,000 aircraft operators worldwide.

Owners of Stella Jet include President Tia Minzoni, Vice President Jasmine Johnson and Associate Vice President Taylor Minzoni. The group seeks to make the private jet industry more affordable and establish a subscription-based model that may be known as the “AirBnb” of private jet rentals.

The main initiatives of the company at the time of its flight are partnerships with influencers who benefit from a premium audience for private jet travel and partnerships with premium travel services, including celebrity chauffeur services.