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Lisa Vanderpump shut down the idea that TomTom is being rebranded as Pump and explained the bar’s nod to her former restaurant during an interview on Tuesday.
After Peter Madrigal, 40, spoke of a Pump sign at the venue and suggested that Lisa, 63, may have bought Tom Sandoval, 42, and Tom Schwartz, 41, out of their joint venture, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum denied that she’s turning TomTom into Pump, which shuttered its doors in 2023.
“When we closed Pump, we moved some of the staff and our chef to TomTom, as they were so good, so we’ve been affectionately calling the back garden of TomTom the Pump Garden,” Lisa explained to Us Weekly on August 13. “But that happened months ago!”
“[I] hadn’t thought about rebranding it all, but thanks for the idea Peter,” she added.
With Vanderpump Rules on pause ahead of its 12th season, Lisa is focused on opening her new restaurants, including Pinky’s in Sin City.
“We’ve been hard at work on Pinky’s at the Flamingo in Las Vegas. Does he want to change the name of that too?” she wondered of her longtime SUR Restaurant manager.
On the August 12 episode of The Sarah Fraser Show, Peter noted that the TomTom sign no longer seemed to be on the front of the bar and claimed Lisa was “rebranding” the bar.
“So when you walk into that building formerly known as TomTom, you walk in and there’s a gate that says Pump above it,” he explained.
Peter also said he “thought she already did” when he was asked if Lisa bought out Sandoval and Schwartz in the wake of backlash from Sandoval’s affair with Rachel “Raquel” Leviss, 29, which led to poor online reviews and threats of boycotts.
Even now, nearly a year and a half after Sandoval and Raquel’s romance was exposed, Sandoval continues to face dire circumstances within his businesses. As Peter explained, his and Schwartz’s other bar, Schwartz & Sandy’s, which opened in 2022, is reportedly a “ghost town.”