Jon Taffer
It’s been over a decade since preeminent Bar Scientist Jon Taffer headed to Corona, California to visit Angel’s Sports Bar, the establishment he rebranded as Rack’s Billiards and Bourbon by the time the pilot episode of Bar Rescue came to an end.
That watering hole survived for seven more years before closing its doors, and while it may not have stood the test of time, the same can’t be said for Bar Rescue, which filmed its 250th episode around the same time the ninth season premiered on Paramount Network earlier this year.
As someone lucky enough to visit the set when Bar Rescue set up shop in Las Vegas a few years ago, I witnessed dozens of people working tirelessly behind the scenes ahead of the big reveal. However, it’s pretty hard to deny the show can credit the bulk of its success to Jon Taffer, the industry veteran known for using his patented brand of tough love to help struggling businesses turn things around.
I’ve had a number of compelling conversations with Taffer since we crossed paths for the first time in 2019, and I was amped to get the chance to add another chapter to that saga when we recently connected to chat about how Bar Rescue has evolved over the years, the changes the industry at its core has undergone, and some red (and green) flags you can look for when you’re checking out a new spot.
Without further ado…
Our interview with Bar Rescue star Jon Taffer
Paramount Network
BroBible: So you’re on your ninth season of Bar Rescue. I know you’re a fairly confident guy, but did you think you were going to have as much success as you’ve had when you first started?
I just shot my 250th episode three weeks ago, which is an incredible milestone. I never would have ever thought that this would have happened and we’re still going strong.
It’s interesting. When I was flying in an airplane back home with my wife after shooting the pilot, I was happy. I never expected it to get to season one. Then we got season two. I never expected the next season. Never. Now, you know, I have a multi-season deal with the network.
The show’s proven itself. It just continues to do well. It does well internationally as well; I believe in four languages now. So it’s crazy.
But you know why? It’s really about human struggle; people in trouble redeeming themselves. And I think it’s sort of relatable no matter who and where we are. We can all relate to the people going through those struggles. And I think that’s why we succeed: the relatability of it.
You’ve developed a formula and you’ve obviously proven it works. With that said, are you ever reevaluating your approach, whether it’s between seasons or individual episodes? Do you have to stop yourself from tampering too much?
You’ve been on the set. You’ve followed this stuff so you know this, but we follow the story. We don’t always know where it’s going to go.
Sometimes the owner sitdown happens at the end of the episode and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes there are staff meetings after the stress test and sometimes there aren’t. There are slight variations from episode to episode. Every episode doesn’t have to be, you know, a recon into a staff meeting into a stress test into a staff meeting. We’re not that rigid.
If there’s a story to tell, we’ll have that meeting. If there’s no story to tell, we’re moving on. I think that’s one of the reasons why Bar Rescue works so well.
What’s interesting—and this is a little deep, but you’ll relate to this because you’ve been on set—reality shows can be so set up that people behave in extremes. They try to make it real, but by trying to make it real, people step out of their normal envelope. What we try to do is keep them as normal as they can be.
We have all sorts of tricks. We take the lights down and tell him I’m not coming. Then I walk in or I come a day early or I come a day late. We do all that kind of stuff. But I think the trick to Bar Rescue is the fact that we truly do follow the story. So it’s all casting, I got to cast the bars that have a story to tell. Right.
When you look back at the earlier seasons, are there any mistakes you made or regrets you have?
That’s a great question. I’ve never been asked that before.
You know, when I look back to the first season of the show, I was a rookie. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. The producer said, “Okay, go there now and do this. Go there now and do that.” I just went and did what everybody told me to do.
A few years later, they let me start running the show and it became a little more story-based. I would say the first season was probably a little too overstructured because the network had already said “Jon goes here and takes this and turns it into that.” They wanted to know what it was going to be before they spent money on it.
I don’t do that with the network anymore. They trust me. All they know is I’m going there and we’re going to turn it into something That freedom has made the show evolve much better. The average show has a network executive there when they shoot. I haven’t had a network executive on set in maybe 100 episodes.
That’s a big deal. It speaks to the trust that the network has in me and the belief I have in them. I have a remarkably good relationship with my network.
What would you say your level of confidence typically is when you’re wrapping up a rescue? Do you have a sense when it comes to what bars are going to succeed and fail by the time you leave?
I tend to know when I’m walking out because you see if they transform. They don’t have failing bars—they have failing owners, and the failing owner is creating the failing bar.
Sometimes I leave and I know the bar is right, I know the staff is right, but I can see the owner hasn’t changed. Other times I leave and it’s remarkable. Their posture is different. They’re talking faster and their community is responding and I can say, “Son of a gun, this guy has changed.
Someone published a study a few weeks ago assessing the success factor of my show, Robert Irvine’s show [Restaurant: Impossible] and Gordon Ramsey’s show [Kitchen Nightmares]. It sort of blew me away. I don’t say this out of disrespect because I love Robert and I love Gordon, but I doubled them on the success factor. They had us at about 68% and they were closer to the 30s.
I’m very proud of that because I’m a businessman, not a chef. I go in and I attack the whole business—not just the kitchen— and I think that makes a difference. At the end of the day, I want it to be the cameras following me, not me following the cameras, right? Which means it’s got to be real.
We can obviously discuss the pandemic because you can’t really ignore it when it comes to this particular topic, but I’m curious if you’ve noticed any major changes across the industry compared to when you first started Bar Rescue.
Obviously COVID wounded us all. Most bars came out of COVID with some kind of debt—either they were behind on rent or behind on taxes or something else—and now they’re struggling to find employees. Employees are scared about getting each other sick; there’s an awareness of this today that is greater than ever before,
The inflationary impact has also been huge. There was an article in The Wall Street Journal a few days ago that talked about how you can’t make money on a $15 hamburger in New York. I mean, think about that. That’s just insane. In California, a Big Mac meal is selling for $13 and change.
It’s a challenging time, which means I gotta be good. I gotta watch my dimes and I really have to manage it now. Sometimes you can let it coast. You can’t let it coast these days. That’s a big change from five years ago when we first met.
I’m also curious about the cultural side in addition to the economic side. We’re past the cocktail renaissance and the craft beer boom, so are there any other trends you’re keeping an eye on?
Spirits did not have a good year this year as a whole. The spirits industry did not have a good year. The beer industry has not had a good couple of years. People were saying some of them went to spirits and some of them went to wine but wine hasn’t grown that much.
It’s an interesting time. The kind of products that are selling now tend to be not legacy products but more trendy products, like flavored spirits.
High Noons are all over the place when I go out.
I believe it’s the number one selling product in case volume in the country. All those people who are buying those High Noons and ready-to-drink cocktails aren’t buying bottles of spirits anymore.
There’s a lot of shifts and changes in the industry. One of the biggest shifts with the RTDs is that there are so many of them now. I mean, you go to an average liquor store are there are 80 or 90 brands to pick from. There are so many there’s gonna be a big washout in the next couple of years.
It feels like hard seltzer all over again.
It is. You know, some of them are going to make it but the vast majority of them are not.
I admit this might be a dumb question, but you’ve mastered the art of what I like to refer to as “effective screaming.” Is that something you’ve consciously practiced and honed or does it come fairly naturally?
I love your questions, buddy.
You know, my last book was The Power of Conflict. In it, I talked about destructive conflict versus constructive conflict. There’s too much destructive conflict in our lives today. We see it every day in politics and everybody’s trying to destroy each other out there.
Constructive conflict is really powerful and changing. Think about this: a guy owns a bar. He makes his decisions. He’s in a hole a half a million dollars and is about to lose his house. Taffer comes in and now I’ve got to teach him that everything he’s done is wrong. He’s going to resist that, isn’t he? He’s going to push back. That’s constructive conflict because I’m trying to change his behavior for the better, not his opinion. I’m trying to get him to make money.
When I think about that and I think about the power of aggressiveness, I know I’m not telling him anything he hasn’t heard before, Other people have already told him his bar sucks. I have to say it louder. I have to say it more impactfully. I’m only there for four days.
I use conflict as a tool. Very often—and you might have seen it on the episode you did with me—I’m faking the anger because I’m trying to get a moment with him. I’m trying to crack through. I’ll scream and yell and I’ll be furious, but when I walk away, I’m not actually that angry. There is a method to my madness. There are times when it is purposeful and quite deliberate.
I see it as fighting for them, not with them, and I believe that if they believe my intent is good, they’ll give me a lot of latitude to scream at them and challenge them and push back at them. It comes down to them trusting my intentions.
I’ve got a few quicker hits for you to wrap things up. First off, what do you think is the biggest mistake owners generally make?
You know, JC Penney said if you don’t take care of the customers, you have no customers, but if you don’t take care of the business, you have no business.
Many owners take care of the customer—they’re up front shaking hands and giving drinks away—but they don’t take care of the business. It’s a tough business. You can’t spend more than 21 cents of the dollar on liquor. You can’t spend more than 25 cents of the dollar on labor. Your occupancy cost is another 10%. So right now we’re over 50% of every dollar that comes in,
Add the insurance now we’re up at about 60%. Then there’s the office expenses and the cleaning and the utilities. By the time we’re done, I’m going to profit maybe 10 or 15%. If I don’t manage the beverage cost or the labor cost well, those points disappear really quickly, and all of a sudden I’m in a money-losing situation.
You got to run the business. A lot of owners aren’t aware of that. I know a lot of people get into the industry because of the glamour that’s associated with owning your own bar. They just don’t know about those realities before they dive in. ,
Do you have any immediate red flags to look for when you walk into a bar for the first time?
I believe people assess a bar three steps in. You get to smell it. You get to hear the music, right? If you’re a rock guy and they’re playing country, you might know it’s not for you. You get to see the tabletops, the kind of chairs, and the furniture. Is the bar organized? Is the staff in uniforms? How do people look? It’s amazing what people take in and their first three steps.
You can assess a bar long before you order anything. If the staff is dressed well, the place smells good, the music is properly targeted, and the bar is organized, you’re going to have a good experience 90% of the time.
There are a couple of things I like to test. You’re going to love this one: the salt and pepper shakers. At the end of a restaurant shift, every restaurant should empty their salt and pepper shakers to clean them and refill them. That’s just the way a real restaurant does it. If you sit down at a restaurant and that salt and pepper shaker is greasy when you touch it, then imagine what the kitchen looks like. They’re not doing their side work.
How about green flags?
I think just general organization is a great thing to look for. Does it feel organized when you walk in?
Server knowledge is also a big deal. If the server is well-trained, then the cooks are probably well-trained. If you ask a server about something in a menu item and they don’t know the answer, that would concern me very much. A great place trains their servers, to know what’s in the food. What if you have an allergy and they don’t know what’s in it, right?
So training and the professionalism of the front of the house will tell you how the professionalism is in the back of the house too.
Are there any litmus tests as far as specific items are concerned?
Another great question. Certain things define a business. A burger can define a business.
Is it a thin burger or is it a thick burger? Is it a lousy bun or a custom bun? What are the toppings they give you with it? What is the quality of the meat; is it fresh or a frozen burger patty? If it’s a frozen patty on a basic bun, that tells you something. If it’s a nice blend on a custom bun that tells you something. A burger is a really defining item.
Other defining things are simple things like an Old Fashioned. It needs to be muddled and made correctly in the glass. Did they drop the cherry on top or muddle it first like they’re supposed to? These little things really define a restaurant, but to me, it’s hard to top the burger.
Small portions of this interview were edited for clarity.