Anyone watch "Bar Rescue" on Spike TV?

There's a show called "Bar Rescue" featuring a guy called Jon Talbot..He visits bars that are failing and trys to rescue them from Owners who could care less,Kitchens that are Health Risks,Bar Maids who pour too much drink in too big glasses,Etc...in short,bars that are failing because no one gives a S---! Great Show!

 

Pretty cool show. Talbot cracks me up sometimes, when he get's into their faces.

 

I like shows like this. There's one on Food Network about struggling restaurants

 

I do. Caught it one time and recorded all the episodes on my DVR. I enjoy the business behind it and the science. Much better than Kitchen Nightmares.

And his name is Jon Taffer - not Jon Talbot.

I'm sad the current season has ended though - but if you search online they're casting for Season 3 so I assume they plan to go forward with Season 3.

 

I have watched them all...love the show. Much better than any of the Gordon Ramsey shows. Some of the things he explains in order to get more business are quite brilliant...and I like that he brings in experts...he doesn't claim to be a master chef and bartender etc..but he knows how to manage a bar and bring in the right people to make the place successful.

 

New episode / season started last night 2/10 on Spike TV.

More of the same as the OP described above. I can only take a couple of episodes of this show at a time. Jon Taffer gets a little too wound up for me.

 

Can't remember the name of that one - maybe Restaurant Undercover? - but I like it. I saw an episode of it yesterday where the female bar manager was running a dating service with all the female waitresses.

 

Great show. Taffer can be tough, but his intentions are good. He gets results, and the bar owners/staff usually end up very happy with him.

 

Great show. New episodes starting airing 2 weeks ago.

 

I was a watcher of this show from the start. I've enjoyed the insights into the bar business and what works and what doesn't, and Taffer appears to know his stuff. It does shock me that things are so bad in some bars-how can owners be so irresponsible?
But lately, I'm getting the feeling that Taffer is starting to believe his own hype, and the amplification on his tantrums is rising. It appears to be focusing more on Taffer than on the bars themselves, IMO. Humiliating the owners/staff seems to be okay with him- it's the gimmick that keeps people watching and frankly, its become tiresome to me. Same formula each episode- survey the bar, build up the need for Taffer, blow in, yell a bunch, maybe throw something, make threats, storm out, next morning you're everybody's savior again, teach, humiliate some more, rebuild, convince everyone the concept is fantastic and all your idea, walk away the hero.
And the editing on this show is downright horrible- everything is edited to reinforce whatever Taffer just said, but it seems to be out of sequence much of the time. One recent episode, where Taffer and his experts were in a vehicle in the parking lot, reviewing the tapes, he stated "look, there's not a woman in the place" and the very next scene, the camera is on a shot of the actual bar and there are two women seated at the bar. I'd really like to know if these places survive longterm after Taffers intervention- logic to me would indicate if an owner had the ability to run a bar, he would have succeeded to begin with, and even with new gimmicks and decor after Taffer, it's the same guy running the bar...

 

I agree. This seems to be the case with a lot of the cable reality shows lately that I have liked. After a few seasons, it becomes so obvious that if not staged, they are at least so heavily edited to only show what they think the audience wants to see, and they get old.

With this show, it would seem like any bar should be able to do well after the free redesign and equipment they get, not to mention the free publicity from being on the show. But I know some of them still fail. This site lists which ones are still open & which are closed: http://www.barrescueupdates.com/p/all-bar-rescue-updates.html (Don't know how accurate it is.)

EDIT: I just looked at the list & see Piratz closed a few months ago. That was my favorite episode, and I would definitely have gone there if I were ever in the area.

 

"Staged" is a great word to use- when something is staged, is it still a reality show? I mean, some of these shows, like Restaurant Impossible, are totally staged but edited to seem like they happened as they are broadcast. Do they have to stage scenes to boost up the excitement level to hold on to viewers? I mean, would a real show, where the bars are dissected and the viewers actually see where they go wrong and how they are "fixed" be so bad to watch? Do we need exaggerated drama to be interested now?

 

Taffer and company just did their thing in my neighborhood. This is "Hooch Bar and Grill"


They are an old school lounge that hasn't really been updated in 40 years. It has everything that Taffer looks for(traffic, location) except for a loyal clientele. Fine. But I doubt what he did will help. Updated drink menu and food will NOT save it.
So on the outside what did they do? Painted the building blue and white, and branded them with Taffer's new brand. The Proving Ground.


This was his big concept for the Detroit area. And it might work somewhere else. We are no where near a proving ground track, and even the nearest auto factory is 25 miles a way. This is situated on Telegraph(US-24) 1 mile from the Taylor border in Dearborn Hts. And the building looks lamer than before. At least they dumped the strippers. I just have no clue who he is aiming this bar at.

 

I'm kind of turned off by the screaming. But I love what he does at the end--the revamping, the computer systems, yummy menu items. I'm watching less and less. I do have to say I have never seen such a total a*hole as the guy who ran the bar in Austin. One of the few times the owner went through the changes and then blew off Teffler's changes afterwards.

 

The building that held Piratz Tavern in Silver Spring, MD, is currently serving as a temporary home for the Quarry House Tavern (great dive bar with great burgers), which is rebuilding after a fire. I do feel like "Corporate Bar & Grill" was one of the few missteps in rebranding they've made on the show. Who wants to go to a bar that has a "workplace" theme?

Jon Taffer appeared on the Nerdist podcast in September, and it was a really illuminating interview full of great stories. He got to run the Troubadour in LA in the early 1980s: essentially the keys were thrown to him and he was told, "You're in charge!" Fantastic interview, and I definitely recommend it to fans of the show: http://nerdist.com/nerdist-podcast-728-jon-taffer/

 

One of the bars that Taffer refused to rescue was that "O Face" place. At the beginning of the show, 2 girls(I believe they were staff) fight in the parking lot. Look closely and you will see continuity errors as the shots change. Hmmm.

My favorite part is when we hear from the pro mixologists and chefs. I think I learn something every time!

Taffer may not be a Dale Carnegie disciple, but I do like the show and I do watch this Spike show, along with "Catch A Contractor".
Taffer's approach is often the only one that will register. Some of these people are clearly delusional.



Dan

 

The wife and I used to like watching it, but as was said it got old when the focus started to be more on his tantrums.

 

I like it a lot.

The "pirate bar" episode was infuriating!
I really hope they went out of business after refusing to go along with his changes to preserve the business.

 

They all HATED it. He allowed no input. He was rude and arrogant to longtime employees and friends. The spike died out within days and they had driven off all of their regulars. Because there were offices within eyesight(several miles away) he introduced his big concept.
And they are not the only bar who rejected his changes.

I know that Hootch(see post 13) is doing no better now than before, but the show hasn't aired yet, so we shall see.

 

This is a TV show that lives and dies by a ratings chart and the investment of sponsors -- so, my answer is, "yes, of course." Most of it has got to be "staged" and "amped up." This show is on SpikeTV, so if someone isn't yelling like a faux-tough guy or body slamming some other dude every seven minutes, that station is going to lose more than half of its viewers.

Most folks don't want to admit that a lot of modern "reality" is quite boring -- If this show was completely real, we'd see hours of John Taffer with his reading glasses on sitting in front of a computer pouring over the financial documents and Excel spreadsheets performing legal due diligence.

I think think these shows can be enjoyed on strictly an entertainment level -- like pro wrestling and such -- but, these "three-day turnarounds" sure as hell ain't a course for MBA students.

I compare this show to "Pawn Stars" -- very entertaining, a little knowledge thrown in, but completely scripted. If "Pawn Stars" was based in reality, we'd just being seeing degenerate gamblers and drunks showing up at the store at 2:30 am to pawn off watches and jewelry. Talk to any pawn shop owner in Las Vegas -- 80% of their business comes from these low-level, five-minute transactions.

 

That may be true, but it is possible to have an enjoyable and successful reality show without people being awful to each other. The only one I watch is Overhaulin' which features car designer Chip Foose and team "stealing" a deserving person's car and rebuilding the thing from the ground up with the cooperation of a family member or friend of the car owner in seven days. Chip is a really nice guy and an awesomely talented designer, and this "A Team" of builders somehow manage to accomplish this without screaming at each other, throwing things or having temper tantrums. My brother used to watch a show called American Hot Rod which featured Chip's former employer Boyd Coddington, and it was rife with all the worst "reality" crap, which (in my opinion, obviously) detracted from the show.

 

I'm a non-drinker and I enjoy watching the show. It's pure spectacle but I like the drama between Taffer and the know-nothing bar owners.

 

The episodes seem to redundant to me, but I do enjoy the barmaids.

 

They didn't go out of business right away, but eventually. There is a YouTube clip of them burning the new sign a few days after the re-branding.

 

I was in the bar business long enough to know that the #1 cause of failure is owners/managers/bartenders (in descending order of capacity to mess things up) getting drunk every night and giving away the store to feel like a big shot, get laid, suck up to local sports stars, and generally compensate for something. Even of the direct loss (pour cost, plus forgone sales) isn't huge, it sends the message to staff that there are no rules, and to paying customers that they are chumps. If you can get past that barrier, the remaining challenges (deciding what you want the place to be, creating systems, finding and training competent and honest staff) are still there but are much more manageable.

One of the stumbling blocks is that a bartender with a good following at a high volume place can make much more than most owners are willing to pay a manager, and deal with a minute fraction of the headaches. The only reason to move from behind the bar is if you have a realistic path to owning your own place.