“My father was an entrepreneur his whole life,” “says Ronnie Shugar. “He was originally from Montreal, Canada and he only had an eighth-grade education. He’s where I really learned the discipline of what hard work means.” Shugar, who grew up in Los Angeles, California, followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming an entrepreneur in his own right. He spent much of his career dabbling
in the cosmetics and personal care industry, and ten years ago he and his then-girlfriend Donda Mullis started Raw Sugar Living, a wildly successful lifestyle brand producing eco-friendly personal care products. Mullis had family in Longboat Key, so the LA-based couple bought a home there in 2015 and moved to the area full-time in 2019. The pair has since sold the company and parted ways
romantically, but Shugar has adopted Sarasota as his own.
"When I first moved downtown I’d get up at five o’clock in the morning because I was going through a breakup and I didn’t sleep a lot,” says Ronnie Shugar. “I’d get a large coffee and I’d walk around the city just looking at the different architecture and buildings. I saw this beautiful, quaint city. It’s not big, the people are lovely. I
told my family and friends, ‘This is the Palm Springs of the East Coast’.” Shugar saw the beauty and charm in downtown Sarasota, but he felt the area was underutilized and underappreciated. He made it a personal mission to invest his time and money into revitalizing downtown Sarasota. He serves in a volunteer capacity as Vice Chair of the Downtown Improvement District (DID), a taxing district created to enhance the functionality and appeal of downtown Sarasota. Funded by property taxes from commercial properties within the district, the DID takes on an array of projects that benefit businesses and visitors, including transportation solutions and beautification efforts. He has also invested more than $15 million of his own money into properties in downtown Sarasota with the mission to bring more foot traffic to Palm Avenue. One of Shugar’s proudest accomplishments is his new venture the Sugar Champagne Bar—a sophisticated bar with champagne-based
cocktails, elevated small plates and an extravagantly-designed interior that is unlike anything else Sarasota has to offer. “My goal is that for people who visit Sarasota, they’ll want to see the Ringling Museum, they’ll want to see St. Armand’s Circle and they’ll want to see the Sugar Champagne Bar,” Shugar says. “It’s a piece of art and it’s really going to be a landmark for the city.”