Worth It

Friday, July 9, 2004 | 4:10 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

July 10 - 11, 2004

Jennifer Worthington is busy. Her nightclub Tangerine opened a few days ago, workers are smoothing out the wrinkles and in a few minutes her 4-year-old daughter will arrive for lunch.

"You can set that down over there," Worthington says to an employee, then explains, "He's ready to kill me. That's the employee who will chop my head off today."

At 32, Worthington is a former film producer-turned-nightclub owner who looks more college student than businesswoman. She's slender. Her clever wit complements her Hollywood looks -- blond hair, blue eyes and ivory skin.

With the recent opening of Tangerine, her third Las Vegas nightclub with Robert Frey, Worthington says there's more to come.

Las Vegas Sun: What makes a nightclub successful?

Jennifer Worthington: If I told you that, then everybody would go out and open one. Like anything else, if you entertain people and they have a fantastic time, they're going to be talking about it and want to come back.

Sun: Are you a club-goer yourself?

JW: Definitely not. No. I'm a homebody. I don't like going out to nightclubs and bars. I like to be home in bed.

When you own them you have to come. But it's different than going out for pleasure.

Sun: You entered the local scene by opening Coyote Ugly. What brought you here?

JW: I was producing the movie "Coyote Ugly" for Jerry (Bruckheimer) and I was pregnant and I moved to Las Vegas right after that, so I sort of felt like it was a natural fit for Las Vegas for all the obvious reasons and a very good friend of mine had businesses and casinos, Robert Frey, so we teamed up and opened Coyote and it turned into this huge success.

Sun: How did you get connected with Bruckheimer?

JW: I went to NYU film school and he hired me right out of school.

Sun: I didn't expect you to be so young.

JW: I know, I'm really young. But I look younger. I get carded everywhere I go.

Sun: Not only that, but you're working in a male-dominated business.

JW: Yeah. Ever since I've started my career I've been in a man's business. Working for Jerry Bruckheimer, I was the only female executive. I think that's really true of most businesses still.

Sun: Does that cause any problems for you?

JW: I can hang with the boys. For me I don't look at being a woman as a hindrance. So when I walk into a business situation -- or anything I'm involved with -- I don't really care if I'm the only woman. In fact, I think that's more fun and more challenging.

Sun: Is competition pretty cut-throat?

JW: Yeah, absolutely. But you can't really worry about your competition. You have to worry about doing what we do the best. I guess it is survival of the fittest. The hotels are seeing how many people are being drawn in by the nightclub so everybody's doing it.

You have to really market. You have to open with a big bang. Customer service is really important. We don't want anyone walking out unhappy.

Sun: Is it easier to open clubs in Las Vegas where there are ready-made party groups?

JW: That's why people come to Vegas, to let loose and do everything they would never do at home. We also have longevity in our night life in our clubs in a way that L.A. and New York doesn't because we have an ever-revolving stream of different people coming in every single weekend. So it's not like you have the same burnout factor that you have in those other cities.

Sun: You opened Coyote Ugly in Washington, D.C.?

JW: In February. In D.C. we sort of have a much more conservative version of Coyote Ugly. But I really say that we do a PG-13 even here. It's sexy without crossing any lines.

Sun: How does the talent compare?

JW: The talent is different. Here, in all our different venues in Las Vegas the girls are all professional, A-level performers. And of course in D.C. you don't have that. It's sort of a different training process for them.

Sun: Bikini's was your second Las Vegas club. How did that come about?

JW: The Rio was looking for a nightclub and we sort of wanted to do the next level, the next demographic and we were really interested in doing sort of a Miami-themed nightclub.

The thing about Tangerine is we're sort of taking that to the next level. We ... believe in blending the performance and a nightclub into one.

Sun: Was Tangerine molded after Carmen Electra's Pussycat Dolls?

JW: No. No. The burlesque trend has really sort of become very strong in the last year all over the country and it's sort of a natural fit for Las Vegas for all the obvious reasons.

The nice thing about burlesque is women like it as much as the men love it so it's not anything that in anyway alienates women. We try to be very careful about that.

My partner and I both have 4-year-old daughters and I think that we sort of look at things from that perspective that we don't want to do anything that would in any way embarrass our children. We look at this as good clean fun. It's risque without being really risque.

Sun: Tangerine appeals to a different crowd than Coyote Ugly and Bikinis.

JW: When we opened Coyote there was definitely a niche for those kind of people. There was a whole lot of nightclubs with red velvet ropes and people were intimidated to stand in line and get picked.

All of these places are businesses so you open them with that in mind. You open them with a specific demographic and you market them to a specific demographic so just because we do one doesn't mean we don't know how to do the other.

The crowd that comes to Coyote has a lot of money to spend, they want to have a good time and yet there was no place for them to go at night.

Sun: It's been successful?

JW: It's the highest-grossing bar per square foot in this country and there's a reason for that.

Sun: I hear that you're looking to open a Girls Gone Wild establishment.

JW: It's a project that the company's working on.

Sun: In Las Vegas?

JW: We're looking at locations in Las Vegas.

Sun: Are you surprised to be here?

JW: I would say every day I wake up surprised. Life is interesting right now. I never imagined in a million years I would end up in Las Vegas, and here I am doing something I never imagined in a million years I would be doing.