Best Foot FWD

For anyone thinking of starting a business, especially in the hospitality industry, Bobby Rutter has two words of advice: law school.

“[It] teaches you so much about the work ethic and perseverance you need if you want to be an entrepreneur,” says Rutter, who co-founded and manages a national chain of successful bars and restaurants while practicing plaintiff’s insurance coverage law in Cleveland. “You need to be stress-tested, and there is no stress test like law.”

Rutter, 44, is COO of entertainment venues under the umbrella of Forward Hospitality Group. With more than a dozen locations in Cleveland, Chicago, San Diego and St. Petersburg, Florida, Forward caters to a variety of audiences in its themed nightclubs and music venues, including fans of country at its Welcome to The Farm music and dance bars, electronic dance music (EDM) at its FWD (pronounced “Forward”) club, and baby boomers at its Good Night John Boy clubs. Six of the clubs are in the Cleveland area.

“I’ve always wanted to start my own business,” Rutter says. “Hospitality comes naturally.”

The chain has booked nationally known DJs and performers such as EDM headliners Steve Aoki, deadmau5, Kaskade and Afrojack, as well as rap star Rick Ross and country music up-and-comer Chase Rice, often to sold-out audiences. “We took time to develop that reputation,” Rutter says. “When labels trust you with artists, whether they’re in the country end or on the dance end, there’s a feeling-out period. We had to earn our stripes.”

It all started 10 years ago when Rutter, Michael Schwartz—who was already making a splash with clubs in Atlanta—and DJ Dante Deiana, an old friend of Rutter’s, teamed up to open FWD Day + Nightclub in the East Bank entertainment district of The Flats, a revitalized area along Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River. Over several years, the trio worked out their plan for an open-air club with the late Scott Wolstein, the real estate developer who reinvigorated The Flats.

The 22,000-square-foot outdoor nightclub—which includes a swimming pool, stages, bars and cabanas—has become a haven for movers and shakers. Axios Cleveland dubbed the spot “the Ibiza of the Midwest.”

“I always liked hospitality,” he says. “I grew up working in my grandparents’ pizza places, then throughout school I worked at high-end country clubs. And I also had a love for the music, so it became pretty natural to me.”

For the first three years after FWD opened, Rutter would hang out at the club late into the night and early morning. “Now I’m a bit more like manager of the managers as we’ve grown,” he says. “My daily work is a lot less in the venues and more dealing with management to make sure that the culture and everything is good.”

He is also a partner at his father’s Cleveland-area firm, Rutter & Russin. Rutter first learned his craft at a large Chicago firm that represents insurance companies, later switching to working on a contingency basis for policyholders fighting for their insurance claims. He and his father collaborate on several cases each year. The elder Rutter “is a bit more intellectual and a writer,” his son says. “I’m a bit more upfront. I can do depositions. I can present at trial. So he’s more of the paper. I’m more of the talking. It works out well.”

Rutter grew up in Independence, a town of fewer than 8,000 people 8 miles south of Cleveland, and studied communications at Ohio State University before attending law school at Ohio Northern. After his stint at a Chicago law firm, he returned to the Cleveland area in 2014.

“That was predominantly driven by my wife and I having our daughter, but Cleveland’s also a great town,” he says, calling its suburbs “beautiful places to raise a family.”

Rutter wishes more people knew what Cleveland has to offer. While its image has improved since the days when the polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire, “there is still some of that leftover old Cleveland perception by people who haven’t necessarily [experienced] the market. There’s a lot of people now, especially with the events that we’ve been hosting, who have gotten to see that those days of stigmatism are over.”

The best time to visit? Summer, with its cooling breezes off Lake Erie, says Rutter: “Cleveland in the summer is second to none.”

Bobby Rutter’s Top 5 Things to Do in Cleveland

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. One of the most comprehensive U.S. art collections, with works by Monet, Picasso and Andy Warhol.
• Playhouse Square. Downtown theater district has 10 performance spaces, with five theaters restored to 1920s elegance.
• Marble Room Steaks and Raw Bar. A fine-dining restaurant in the opulent lobby of a Gilded Age skyscraper.
• Little Italy. Charming historic neighborhood filled with cafes, restaurants, shops and art galleries.
• The Flats. Renovated waterfront district along the Cuyahoga River featuring restaurants, bars, shops, a boardwalk and the Greater Cleveland Aquarium.