Charles Khabouth

Early life

Born in Beirut, Lebanon in the early 1960s, Charles Khabouth was raised in a comfortable, upper-middle-class home alongside his brother and sister. His father, a successful restaurateur, died of a heart attack when Charles was just nine years old. At 15, amid the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, Khabouth and his family fled Beirut in a fishing boat packed with hundreds of people. After stops in Cyprus and Athens, they eventually settled in Toronto, Canada.

In his new home country, Khabouth quickly adapted. While attending Overlea Secondary School, he juggled three jobs—working at McDonald’s, a grocery store, and a carpet-cleaning service simultaneously. After graduating, he tried his hand at computer sales and retail, eventually working his way up to managing a Stitches location in the Yorkville section of Toronto.

Career

After a few nights out in Toronto’s lively and vaunted nightclub scene, Charles Khabouth became enamoured by the allure of nightlife and began saving to one day open his own club. In 1984 at the age of 22, he launched his first venue, Club Z, shortly after establishing INK Entertainment as a management entity.

Building on that momentum, Khabouth opened another location in 1987, this time called Stilife, which found immediate success. Stilife attracted an affluent, fashion-forward clientele and helped to revitalize Toronto’s up-to-then underused Garment District. Its popularity sparked a wave of nightlife investment in the area, earning the neighbourhood the new moniker of “The Entertainment District”—a development for which Khabouth is widely credited.

In the 1990s, Khabouth shifted toward much larger, more dynamic spaces. He acquired and redeveloped the RPM club, eventually rebranding it as The Guvernment. This massive venue—paired with the adjacent venue of Kool Haus—became central to Toronto’s booming rave and live music scenes, hosting globally famous DJs and major touring rock and pop music acts. By 1997, Kool Haus was drawing top artists and thousands of concertgoers, and was generally viewed to be one of North America’s most influential music spaces.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Khabouth launched several restaurants, but critical acclaim for his work in the dining sector came later. In the early 2010s, he partnered with restaurateur Hanif Harji, opening high-end spots like Byblos, Patria, and Weslodge to widespread acclaim for their cuisine and design.

In 2017, Khabouth opened Bisha Hotel & Residences, a luxury boutique hotel in Toronto that merged the concepts of hospitality, fashion, and nightlife into a single experience. With rooftop dining at KŌST, art-filled interiors, and helmed by internationally celebrated chef Akira Back, Bisha marked a new chapter for Charles Khabouth, bringing together over 30 years of industry experience into one marquee property.

In the present, through INK Entertainment, Charles Khabouth presides over a vast entertainment, epicurean, and lifestyle empire that includes more than 15 restaurants, 5 nightclubs, Canada’s largest electronic music festival—VELD, which was created with Khabouth as the driving force in 2012—as well as renowned art galleries in New York, Toronto, Paris, and Palm Beach. In recognition of his many accomplishments, Ernst & Young presented Khabouth with the award for Entrepreneur of the Year in Hospitality & Entertainment in 2023.

Net Worth

Information about Charles Khabouth’s net worth is not currently available to the public.