The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at: [email protected]. 

Congratulations to my good friend Freddie Lutz as he builds his restaurant and bar empire. His newest creation will be Freddie’s Beach Bar in Rehoboth Beach, Del., located in the old Pond location at 3 S. 1st St. Lutz hopes to be open by Memorial Day. He adds this to his Freddie’s Beach Bar and Federico Ristorante Italiano in Virginia. Upon signing the lease he said, “I was sitting in Freddie’s Beach Bar recently thinking about what was missing in the place and I said to myself: “I know! Sand and an ocean! It only took me 20 years to come to that conclusion! Imagine: a beach bar at the ACTUAL beach! Whoever would have thought of such a concept!!!”  

I’ve known Lutz for 43 years and it’s been fun to watch him successfully navigate the world of food and beverage continuing to fulfill his lifelong dream of owning his own restaurants and bars. 

Lutz began his restaurant career at the bottom as a dishwasher at the East Side Diner in Providence, R.I., while attending the Rhode Island School of Design. After returning to Virginia and his childhood home, where he still lives today, he worked at Portofino restaurant. When the owners opened Café Italia across the street he went to work there. For 25 years, except for a couple of years when he worked at Ponte Vecchio, owned by Lucy DeCarlo, he was at the Café. He once called Ponte Vecchio a “fancy shmancy downtown D.C. restaurant.” He always said he enjoyed the more homey and comfortable style of the Café. Over the years, Lutz has met a lot of ‘fancy shmancy’ people, including Tipper and Al Gore, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and Jim and Sarah Brady to name just a few. And many of them enjoyed the good home cooking and ambiance Lutz maintains at his restaurants today. The original Freddie’s Beach Bar opened in 2001. It was always a ‘safe place’ for members of the military stationed at the Pentagon during the era of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He has awards and mementoes from those days on the walls of the bar officially thanking him for being a welcoming place where people could be themselves. Lutz is ‘out and proud’ and an incredible host. He knows how to get people to enjoy themselves. He and his partner of 20 years, Johnny Cervantes, love making people happy and of Johnny, Lutz says, “He is the love of my life.” Now beach goers who may not know Lutz from his Virginia places will get to know him and I predict love him.

Congratulations also to Andrew A. Isen on having his company WinMark Concepts certified as LGBTBE by the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce. The NGLCC is the business voice of the LGBT community and serves as the nation’s exclusive certifying body for LGBT-owned and operated businesses. Isen, founder and president of WinMark Concepts, Inc. said, “For the past 30 years, WinMark has been the leading marketing and communications agency successfully guiding companies to the LGBTQ consumer sector. We are proud of our LGBTBE certification and look forward to assisting corporations with their marketing, diversity and inclusion initiatives.”

Isen has been named a member of “Out 100” by Out magazine. Prior to founding WinMark, he served in marketing roles with the Navy League of the United States and the Girl Scouts of America. He is a philanthropist for arts and LGBTQ organizations including the Signature Theatre, Goodspeed Musicals, ASCAP, and the Point Foundation.