About
Emanuele Votano
Founder and Managing Partner. He leads every engagement and coordinates the specialists and partner firms behind it.
Hospitality is a way of working.
Devolus was founded by Emanuele Votano after years running the business himself. As Director of Operations and Business Development he led the US expansion of All’Antico Vinaio, with seven openings and twelve locations managed across New York, California, Nevada and Florida, and went on to direct operations for Gelateria Gentile’s five New York stores and central kitchen.
His background is Bocconi University and strategy consulting in Milan. In recent years he has worked closely with investment funds from the company side, from due diligence through valuation.
Along the way he saw where expansions really break: a plan that ignores the worst case, a lease signed too fast, a team hired too late. Devolus exists to help companies avoid those mistakes, with an operator on the ground who has made those decisions before.
Today Devolus works with companies in food, retail, consumer goods, e-commerce, industrial products and tech. For hospitality groups, investment funds and family offices, it offers an independent assessment of US expansion plans and of companies under review, and support after the investment. Every project is run by our team together with a network of professionals and experts: lawyers, accountants, architects, immigration attorneys and licensed real estate brokers. You deal with one point of contact, who coordinates everyone else.
The real work starts after the guest walks in, not when the deal is closed. That is how we run every project, in English and Italian, wherever it takes us in the US.
Three things we don’t compromise on.
Start from the numbers
What can this business realistically generate here, and does it have a real reason to exist? Everything else follows from that answer.
Plan for the worst case
A structure that holds up when things go wrong, from the lease to the team, is worth more than an optimistic forecast.
Stay after the keys
Openings are where problems start, not where the job ends. We stay close through the first months.
From New York, across the US.
Directly
New York · California · Nevada · Florida
With partners
Massachusetts, Illinois and other states, on request.
Real estate brokerage is available where our partner brokerage is licensed.