Less than two years after Burger King was sold to private investors, another Miami-Dade-based national restaurant chain is going private. It was announced today that Angelo, Gordon & Co.'s Private Equity Group will pay $296 million for Benihana, Inc. and take the chain private.
More >>

Wikimedia Commons

Eduardo Saverin, ex-Miamian, ex-American, and ex-Facebook CFO

For the first time, Facebook will put its stock up for public sale today. The company will instantly land at least $16 billion, pushing its value to well over $100 billion. Wunderkind CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be the obvious winner, but hundreds of other investors are also in line for a windfall.

One of them is Eduardo Saverin. You know: the "good guy" who's betrayed by Zuckerberg in the movie The Social Network. Saverin lived in Miami for seven years and attended posh Pinecrest school Gulliver Prep before meeting Zuck at Harvard. This week, Saverin is being slammed for moving to Singapore and renouncing his American citizenship just in time to save money on his $3- to 4-billion Facebook fortune.

Saverin denies that he's being unpatriotic, but just after graduating from Gulliver, Saverin was more honest. Check out this quote we dug up:
More >>

Thirty-three-year-old Pompano Beach resident Gasmy Joseph wears a supertall Mohawk. About a year ago, an epiphany struck when he wanted to spread the word about a buddy's birthday party: Why not advertise it on the hairdo?

In terms of innovation, Thomas Edison's light bulb now looks like a piece of infomercial junk.

More >>

wikimedia

Paradise lost

When Alan Lara touched down in American Samoa, he was looking for a fresh start. Bluesky Communications, a subsidiary of Miami-based eLandia, had agreed to pay the Mexican engineer and his fiancée to move to the tiny U.S. territory from their home in Guatemala. But months later Lara was abruptly fired, and he says the company stripped him and his girlfriend of their apartment, car, and cell phones. Suddenly, American Samoa transformed from a tropical paradise into a prison cell.

"We are desperate," Lara says, speaking from Pago Pago, the territory's capital. "We are broke. This is a small island, and they are making it very uncomfortable for us here. We want to leave."

More >>

Follow the scent...

Last week, Riptide received a mysterious complaint from a Brazilian reader who had an intriguing allegation: Located in 2800 Biscayne Boulevard -- the building that, until last year, housed Miami New Times office -- a company called Leader Perfume was ripping off South American customers, he claimed.

We decided to investigate -- and quickly ended up lost down a lavender-scented rabbit hole.

More >>

Here's the good news: The gap between how much women and men make in Florida is actually pretty low compared to the rest of the country, and the Sunshine State actually has the 11th narrowest gap in the nation.

Here's the bad news: That gap still means a Florida woman makes 80 cents to every dollar a man makes, and the gap is even more noticeable for black and Hispanic women.
More >>

Big drama at two of Miami's best known hotels this weekend, as two iconic resorts had some dramatic shake-ups on the business side. The owners of the Eden Roc, a Miami Beach classic, are taking their management company to court. Meanwhile, the owners of the Setai, a member of the new guard of Miami Beach luxury hotels, just decided to oust their management company at midnight on Saturday. Most rank-and-file employees will likely keep their jobs, but the higher-ups are apparently out of work.
More >>

​We don't need to tell anyone who's attempted to park at Aventura Mall that the place is busy. It's so busy, in fact, that it's actually America's second most visited shopping mall. The only mall more crowded than it actually has an indoor amusement park, so there's no shame in coming in second.
More >>

​Online shopping was a boon to buyers who sometimes felt a little embarrassment when buying certain products. The web's anonymity may have made them feel like no one could judge them for, say, buying an industrial-sized vat of KY Jelly. But the mere presence of social media logos like Twitter and Facebook may be bringing a bit of shame to web shopping according to a new study by the University of Miami School of Business Administration.
More >>

​Eager Jason Wu fans lined up by the masses earlier this month to be the first to get their hands on Target's Wu collection, but in Miami, Kevin Wills and his girlfriend were way ahead of the game. The pair bought out more than $5,000 in Wu merchandise (nearly the entire stock at the Midtown Target). At the time, it appeared the couple planned to resell the items for marked-up prices. Wills, however, claimed yesterday to Riptide that instead he was planning all along to sell the clothes for charity. He had set up an event benefiting Dress for Success on March 4.

Well today, the Stage, the venue where the charity was to be held, emailed Riptide to let us know Dress for Success has canceled the event and to clarify that the Stage was "not aware of the controversy."
More >>