Seacrets Owner Leighton Moore Talks New Distillery, Amazing Growth Of Business, Importance Of People

OCEAN CITY — When Seacrets owner Leighton Moore sets a deadline, you can expect literal and proverbial mountains to be moved in order to hit it.

This week, the newest tower in the Seacrets kingdom opened on the anniversary of the former 40-seat tiki bar’s inception. Now, 28 years later, Seacrets is one of the biggest clubs in the country, and with this week’s opening of the Seacrets Distillery, it also signifies a shift in business model and the long-term strategy for Moore and his team.

Moore sat down with The Dispatch this week to talk distillation, the idiosyncratic art of making a successful bar and how he likes to do big things in the community all while keeping as low of a profile as he can.

Q: This week marks the beginning of the next chapter in what some may call the ‘Seacrets Empire’ with the grand opening of the new three-story, 12,000-square-foot Seacrets Distillery. I was here when you broke ground in late October for this building and now we are just days from its much anticipated opening. Tell me about the past few months to get this up and running and your excitement about people seeing this vision and plan come to fruition.

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