Why The Rose

Drew Wofford found his way into nightlife the way a lot of people find their way into a family: he walked into a room, and it kept him.

It was the back of house, the door, the floor. A crew of bartenders, entertainers and door staff who fed him, taught him the business, and never once asked him to explain himself. He has been in the industry since 2003, and he learned it the only way that truly sticks: from the bottom up.

Raleigh is where nightlife became a career. At Legends Nightclub and Flex Bar, Drew came up inside one of the largest nightlife operations in the state. By the time he left, he understood something many operators never do: a great venue is not a building with a liquor license. It is a room that an entire community decides is theirs.

He has spent the two decades since building exactly that, again and again.

In 2012, Drew opened Chemistry in Greensboro. In 2016, when Q Lounge was a month away from going dark after a decade, he stepped in, kept the lights on, and gave the space new life as Q Bar. He went on to run Radium in Fayetteville. Then, in 2024, he took on The Scorpio, a 58-year-old Charlotte institution and the longest-running LGBTQ+ nightclub in the Carolinas, and relaunched it as RSVP South End.

Today, Drew owns three clubs, operates a large venue and event space in Raleigh, and works with the North Carolina Bar Owners Association on the policy side of the industry. His career has been built not simply around opening venues, but around understanding what makes them matter, and what they can mean to the communities that call them their own.

There was one detour.

Drew stepped away from nightlife entirely, earned his commercial multi-engine pilot certificate, and went flying, a passion he continues to pursue today. It was a good life, but it was not a complete one. Something was missing.

The room.

The energy of a crowd. The people behind the bar and at the door. The familiar faces who return week after week. The feeling of creating a place where someone can walk in for the first time and somehow know they belong.

So Drew returned to the community that had raised him, and discovered that going back toward it had been the answer all along.

What he does now, he does deliberately.

Drew looks for communities that have been quietly overlooked, the midsize downtowns where the last true gathering place closed years ago and nothing meaningful ever took its place. He invests in those communities. He buys in. He builds the room first, then works to grow a business, a workforce and a neighborhood around it.

To him, nightlife can be more than what happens after dark. Done well, it means jobs and payroll for dozens of people. It means sales tax dollars staying local. It means foot traffic for neighboring businesses and another reason to invest in a downtown. It means giving people a reason to come back to a block at eleven o’clock at night, and giving them a reason to feel like that block belongs to them, too.

That is what brought Drew to Rock Island, Illinois.

For more than two decades, the Illinois side of the Quad Cities has been without the kind of room Drew believes every community deserves: a place built around gathering, belonging, entertainment and connection.

Now, he is creating one in the heart of downtown Rock Island.

The Rose is the next chapter in a career spent building rooms people can claim as their own. It draws on everything Drew has learned over more than twenty years in nightlife, while creating something distinctly for this community and this moment.

The doors are meant for everyone. The room is meant to be shared. Because for Drew, that has always been the point.

Sometimes a room is more than a room.
Sometimes it becomes the place that keeps you.
And sometimes, if you are lucky, you get the chance
to build that place for someone else.

Chad brings together two worlds that, on the surface, might seem very different: more than 25 years of executive leadership, and seven years under the lights as drag performer Bentley Balenciaga.

For Chad, however, those worlds have never been all that far apart.

Both are about people. Both require an understanding of what makes someone feel valued, welcomed and connected. And both have taught him that truly memorable experiences rarely happen by accident. They are created with intention.

Over the course of more than 25 years, Chad has built a career in executive leadership across hospitality, travel, entertainment and customer-experience-driven industries. His work has focused on organizational growth, strategic planning, revenue optimization, operational excellence, and creating experiences that turn first-time customers into loyal ones.

Throughout his career he has led initiatives designed to grow businesses, improve profitability, strengthen customer loyalty, and build organizations capable of sustaining that success over time. But behind the strategies, metrics and operations has always been a fundamental question:

What makes people want to come back?

For Chad, the answer has always been about more than the product or service being offered. It is about how people are treated, how a space makes them feel, and whether the experience gives them a reason to return.

That perspective is complemented by Chad’s creative background. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interior Design, giving him a unique understanding of how physical environments influence the people who experience them.

He knows a room begins communicating before a single word is spoken. The layout, lighting, furnishings, flow, branding and smallest details all contribute to how someone experiences a space. His approach combines aesthetics with customer psychology, designing not simply for how a room looks, but for how people move through it, interact within it, and ultimately remember it.

For Chad, good design is not simply about creating something beautiful.

It is about creating a feeling.

And then there is Bentley Balenciaga.

For seven years, Chad has performed in drag as Bentley, an experience that has given him an entirely different education in entertainment and hospitality. Being onstage has taught him how to read a room, connect with an audience, work with performers, understand production from the talent’s perspective, and recognize the details that separate an ordinary night out from one people remember.

As Bentley, Chad also serves as Cruise Director for Big Gay Cruise, helping create entertainment and experiences for LGBTQIA+ travelers from across the country. The role combines many of the things that have defined his career: hospitality, entertainment, organization, guest experience, and the ability to bring very different groups of people together and make them feel like part of something.

That connection to people extends well beyond entertainment.

Chad believes strongly that being part of a community also means showing up for it.

He serves on the board of the Historic Broadway Neighborhood, contributing to the continued vitality of one of Rock Island’s historic neighborhoods. He also serves on the board of the Quad City Pride Alliance, where he is the Entertainment Director for the annual Pride Festival at Schwiebert Riverfront Park.

In that role, Chad helps shape one of the Quad Cities’ signature LGBTQIA+ celebrations, bringing together performers, audiences, organizations, businesses and members of the broader community. It is work that reflects something he has come to believe throughout his career: entertainment has the ability to do much more than fill a room. It can create connection, strengthen community, and give people a place to see themselves represented.

All of those experiences now come together at The Rose.

The executive understands how to build a business that can grow and endure. The designer understands how to turn four walls into an experience. The entertainer understands the stage, the audience and the people behind the performance. The community advocate understands that a successful venue has a responsibility to contribute to the place it calls home.

Each of those perspectives influences the way Chad approaches The Rose. His vision is not simply about what happens onstage or behind the bar. It is about the entire experience, from the moment someone first hears about an event to the moment they walk through the doors, and ultimately to whether they leave wanting to come back.

Together with Drew, Chad brings a complementary perspective to the partnership. Where their individual paths through hospitality and entertainment have been different, they share the same understanding of what makes a venue matter: people have to feel like there is a place for them in the room.

For Chad, The Rose is an opportunity to bring decades of leadership, design, entertainment and community involvement together under one roof. A business built with intention. A space designed around experience. Entertainment that gives people a reason to show up. And a venue committed to being an active part of the community it serves.