The corporate structure: who actually owns Roxy’s?
This is where it gets interesting. “Roxy’s Pub” isn’t one company — it’s a layered set of entities, all tied to John P. Webb, several organized out of state, with the same Palm Beach Gardens attorney as registered agent and the same West Palm Beach PO boxes. Here’s what the public record shows:
Von Esselborn, Inc. — the property holder. Florida corporation, Document No. K88541, filed May 16, 1989, active, with John P. Webb as its sole listed officer/director and attorney Ryan Kadyszewski as registered agent [13]. It owns both parcels: 309 Clematis (bought 1997, $630,000) [8] and 313 Clematis (bought 2022, $7.5 million) [10].
RP Palm Beach, LLC — the operator, d/b/a Roxy’s Pub. A foreign LLC organized in Alaska, registered in Florida September 29, 2016 (Doc. No. M16000007837), principal address 309 Clematis, mailing address PO Box 2390 (the same box Von Esselborn uses), same registered agent. Its sole listed manager isn’t a person — it’s another company, “Small Time Restaurant Group LLC” of 309 Clematis Street [14].
Roxys Pub, LLC — a prior operator entity, organized in Nevada, registered in Florida December 2011, principal address 309 Clematis, managed by Sandra Lawson. Its registration was revoked in 2019 for failure to file annual reports [15].
Roxys Inc. — an earlier Florida corporation (filed September 2005, officer John P. Webb) that was voluntarily dissolved in November 2011 — one month before the Nevada LLC registered [16].
Wallisville Corporation — an active Florida corporation (filed 2002) with Webb as officer and registered agent, sharing PO Box 2649 with Lawson’s now-dissolved Wine Dive, LLC (the former wine bar at 319 Clematis) [17][18]. Wallisville appears alongside RP Palm Beach and Von Esselborn as a “d/b/a Roxy’s Pub” entity in a 2025 financing agreement [19].
The Austin Republic arm (covered in detail below) extends the same architecture to Webb’s barbecue venture: the “Austin Republic” and “Austin Republic Food Truck” trade names are owned by Plantain Partners I LP (general partner: BK Development Inc., sole director Thomas Wilkinson), and “Austin Republic #2” by Plantain Partners II LLC (manager: Wilkinson) — all with Webb’s other long-time registered agent, Timothy Grice of 319 Clematis, and with Webb’s PO Box 2390 on the original trade-name filings, but Webb’s own name on none of the records [54][55][56][57].
Now, the necessary caveat: no court, regulator, or news outlet has called any of these entities a “shell company,” and forming LLCs in Nevada or Alaska is legal and not uncommon in hospitality. What the record does show is a real-estate-rich corporation (Von Esselborn) separated from out-of-state operating LLCs whose manager is itself an LLC — a structure that became very relevant when a jury handed down a seven-figure judgment. Notably, the news reporting and court records sometimes conflate the entities: the Palm Beach Post described RP Palm Beach as “the company that owns the pub” and Von Esselborn as owning the property, “both controlled by Roxy’s owner John Webb” [4]; CBS12 reported flatly that “both Roxy’s Pub and Von Esselborn, Inc. are owned by the same individual, John Webb” [7].
One more clarification while we’re untangling Clematis ownership: Roxy’s is not part of the Rodney Mayo/Scott Frielich Sub-Culture group that runs Respectable Street, Lost Weekend, and other Clematis venues — that’s an entirely separate ownership group [20][21].