'Bar Rescue' Host Gives Your Failing Bar CPR (Part One)

Aaron Broverman

Filed under: Celebs & Money, Employment & Careers, Entrepreneurship, Food & Drink, Television, Small Business

He's been called the Gordon Ramsay of nightlife.

Jon Taffer is the often argumentative and confrontational host of Bar Rescue, an upcoming show premiering July 17 on Spike that sees him put his nearly 30 years as a world-renowned bar and nightlife consultant to the test. What he says normally takes him three to six months is boiled down to five days on the show, as he attempts to save failing bars and nightclubs across the U.S.

As the president and founder of Taffer Dynamics Inc.,Taffer has been the code red phone call for many huge corporations when it comes to resuscitating their hotels, bars restaurants and nightclubs across the globe. His resume includes consulting for Paramount Pictures, Hyatt International, Ritz-Carlton, Hooters, Holiday Inn, Sheraton, the NFL and The Rainforest Cafe. He's even shook-up Canadian nightlife for Molson-Coors, increased the revenue of Silverbirch Hotels by $6 billion and gave the keynote speech for the Canadian Culinary Federation two years in a row.

With so many recognizable brands trusting his expertise, we couldn't help picking his brain to find out what every bar owner needs to know to keep their establishment thriving in the 21st century.How did you find yourself rescuing bars and nightclubs from the brink of closure?

I went to school for political science and started tending bar in college where I really fell in love with this business. I am a pretty social guy. I loved the social aspects of bars and working with employees who were my own age back then. I just got hooked at a very, very young age in the bar business and I've been doing it now 30 years. When I started in this business it was the mid-1980s, I was the vice-president of a hotel management company in Chicago and in the U.S., tax codes had changed. For the first time ever in America, you could no longer write-off hotels -- they had to be profitable. Suddenly, these hotelliers had pressure to make money from bars and restaurants, which previously had been guest amenities. In 1986, I created my first company, a hotel consulting company to create profitable hotel food and beverage operations. I thought that small Ma & Pa operations would hire me, but, in fact, it was the opposite. Smaller, independent operators tended to have a know-it-all attitude and would never hire me, so all the big corporations did. I wound up working for the big guys, then branched out to Asia and now we have close to 800 projects all over the world.

What are the most common problems owners in the nightlife industry have?

When you see the ten episodes of Bar Rescue, you'll see how varied each of the bars and situations are. But, generally speaking, owner discipline and owner capacity tend to be the biggest issues when tending bars. The old cliche, "A fish stinks from the head" is true. It's not good bar managers running failing bars, it's failing bar managers running failing bars. Bars are traditionally an extension of personality, pace, detail, concept, friendliness, hospitality of the person running them. If you walk into a great place, the detail is there and the joint is just freakin' great man and then you meet the owner and it all makes sense to you. Then, you walk into a place that isn't that way, then you meet the owner and that makes sense too.

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When you talk about a "lack of owner discipline" can you give me an example of what you mean?

In one of our episodes we had an owner who had the same manager for 20 years and the bar's been losing money for six years. The owner was just, "Well, you know, I trust this guy, he's safe and easy for me." So, she never made a change and in that episode, I fired him with a smile on my face. This owner didn't have the courage to change. I'm going to use a quote, "If we do tomorrow what we did today, we'll get tomorrow what we got today." If you're losing money, you better wake up tomorrow morning and do something very different man, or you're not going to get out of your situation.

Are there things managers do that are guaranteed to sink your business?

There is a common theme amongst a lot of managers. Let's say you're the manager and I'm sitting across the table from you, we're having a conversation, and it's heated because I have five days to do what I normally do in three months, so there's no time to mess around. I'm going to be in your face. So, I say, "You know your costs are high, do you know that?" "Yes." "Do you take inventory?" "No." "Do you know you're supposed to take inventory?" "I do." "Your food costs are high, do you know that?" "Yes." "Do you know they're supposed to be lower?" "Yes." "Have you taken any steps to lower it?" "No." In other words, you know what you're supposed to do, you're are just too f--ing lazy to do it!"

That's when Jon Taffer puts his bar rescuing skills into action and starts laying the smacketh down and tearing apart your world. Tune in for part two of our interview to find out his six-point strategy for fixing a bar room disaster.

Tune into Bar Rescue on July 17 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Spike TV.