July 17 marks 14 years since the premiere of Bar Rescue, an episode called “Fallen Angels” where Jon Taffer worked to save a flailing biker joint. This past Monday, sitting at Shift4’s SkyTab booth at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago—a partnership between Taffer and company CEO and friend Jared Isaacman—he was a week away from filming episode No. 280. “I thought I’d do a pilot and go home,” Taffer says.
While, naturally, much has changed since Taffer barged into TV well over a decade ago, he’s still a fan of some even older history. What was the first public building built in America? A church. The second? “Bars were congregation points,” Taffer says. “They were the center of communities. There were no meeting rooms. There were no town halls. There were none of those things then.”
As you’d imagine nearly 300 episodes in, Taffer gets all sorts of requests for his time these days. People tell him their next big idea. Some are OK. Some are not, he says. But what Taffer, who turned 70 years old in November, wants to focus on is what he has already. Namely, his show, his restaurant concept, Taffer’s Tavern, and his bourbon brand, Taffer’s Browned Butter Bourbon.
The restaurant, which debuted five years ago in Atlanta, is something Taffer believes in beyond the business case. Again, a point that traces back.
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When the original bars in America were built, he says, there were walls between tables called “snugs.” These private seating areas were traditionally designed so women could drink in an Irish pub (they couldn’t be seen by the public doing so). Taffer says they evolved to where the priest could sit next to the mayor next to the lowliest guy in town. “Everybody could co-exist in these pubs,” he says. “So they were diversified, by modern terms, and everyone was welcome.”
Taffer wants his four-unit Tavern concept, which claims to have 12 units in the pipeline, to become that hub again. “That’s doesn’t exist now,” Taffer says. “There’s no great bar franchise out there that has a focus on neighborhood. And so, I’m excited.”
Since its 2020 debut, Taffer’s Tavern has tweaked its service model and approach, battled through COVID-19, and had a D.C. location close due to crime concerns. Yet Taffer not only feels better about the chain’s social-first approach and positioning amid a value-driven, experience-thirsty landscape today—he’s found some old friends to work alongside again.
It was 25 or so years ago Taffer sat down with Sam Stanovich, now SVP at 17-concept Craveworthy Brands following its March acquisition of Big Chicken, at Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse in Chicago. Stanovich was considering leaving a role at The National Restaurant Association to strike out as an entrepreneur (he went on to become an area rep for Firehouse Subs and had an independent restaurant in Arizona). The two shared a booth for three hours and Taffer, who was running his consultancy Taffer Dynamics, along with “maybe 11 bars,” offered him some motivation. They stayed in touch.
Taffer also worked with Josh Halpern, Big Chicken’s CEO and Craveworthy’s chief brand officer, headed back to the Anheuser-Busch InBev days when he’d get on Halpern about the “bureaucracy” of focusing too much on consumer data.
“There’s real comfort in this,” Taffer says. “We’ve seen each other in the fire, you know?”
Earlier in May, Taffer and Craveworthy entered a joint venture arrangement not unlike the one CEO Gregg Majewski’s company inked with Big Chicken—essentially a 50–50 partner setup where Craveworthy runs and operates the company as its managing party.
And it means, from a reflective sense, Taffer has gone from telling entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk about a “young person” (Stanovich) he was motivating 25 years ago to being his partner.
Taffer says the familiarity was vital but so was realizing his personal limits. He’s learned at this juncture of his life TV can be all-encompassing. “It’s 24/7,” Taffer says. “They’re texting me now on sign approvals and logo approvals. It never ends.”
Imagine opening a new restaurant every week—since it needs to be built. That’s what Taffer has been doing since Bar Rescue, understandably, requires compressed timelines.
The deal with Craveworthy happened in less than a week as Taffer realized he could shift operational tasks to the group. “It frees me up to build the brand and it frees [Majewski] up to grow the brand,” Taffer says. “We see the brand the same way, which is an exciting part of it.”
Stanovich says Craveworthy has a blueprint for this setup already, given Big Chicken’s Shaquille O’Neal attachment (the company also recently acquired former NFL defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh’s concept, Kinnamōns Bakery). The plan will be to bring Taffer and his expertise in at critical moments. So, when there are ribbon cuttings, for instance, Craveworthy can conduct the pre-work and Taffer shows up for the reveal.
“We do all the formulation,” Stanovich says, “kind of like what Big Chicken did with Shaquille. We set it up. And then Jon, we can ask, ‘what do you think? Let’s get your opinion.’ Modify it and go.”
Stanovich says it removes Taffer from the minutiae of the day to day. Also, this isn’t simply a Tafffer’s Tavern premise—Craveworthy as a whole can pick his brain on other brands, “because he’s such a genius when it comes to it,” Stanovich says. “And he can give us feedback on the other things we’re doing so we can become fully integrated.”
Taffer offers another example of how he sees the partnership unfolding. Recently, Bar Rescue conducted a training week at Taffer’s Tavern in Alpharetta, Georgia. That meant the brand appeared on the show, which reportedly averages about 1.3 million viewers per episode and has amassed north of 900 million over the years—it boasts an audience demand 17.4 times the typical TV spot. “You’re infusing the brand into my television show. Infusing it into all the other work we do. It’s great for awareness,” Taffer says. “It was just hard to build them at the same time.”
Taffer has a track record in merchandising, building check, and driving customer counts. So he agrees with Stanovich on the idea he can translate some of that expertise over to the larger company. “I can make a difference,” Taffer says, adding he’s shaken hands with Shaq, but doesn’t know him on a personal level. Not yet at least. Stanovich expects that will change soon.
“We’re going to put everybody at the table because we don’t operate in silos,” Stanovich says. “We believe in how do we help each other and grow it together.”
As for how big Taffer’s Tavern can get, it’s still early, although there’s sight to 25–30 units in the not-so-distant future, with traditional and non-trad openings factored in, the company said.
Yet, as Taffer often does, his thoughts on the present are as holistic as they are pragmatic. He says he’s “long overdue” to invite Stanovich down to Palm Beach, Florida, to take his family out on the water. And Halpern and Taffer have history that brought them much closer together than sterile operating partners. “We worked together for years,” Taffer says. “I think we did a lot of great work together and made a difference.”
Taffer didn’t realize Stanovich and Halpern were colleagues (which they have been since Big Chicken really entered the fast casual arena in 2021 with Halpern’s appointment as CEO).
The trio reminisced last week at the Show in Chicago about when Taffer toasted the military one Saturday, and recollected the 2016 showdown between Taffer and Robert Irvine Stanovich says was “one of the best powerhouse speeches” given on the big stage.
Through those memories and into the Craveworthy partnership, Taffer says he hasn’t lost sight of what drives him. He gets triple-digit messages a month from doctors, dentists, etc., thanking him. Taffer isn’t always sure for what. “Every week people inspire me to be tougher,” he says.
Just recently, a few days before traveling to Chicago, Taffer says he recorded “the toughest Bar Rescue” yet. It involves a former NBA athlete, but you’ll need to wait until it airs to see what happens. All Taffer knows is bigger fights lead to bigger breakthroughs—and that’s been true for 14 years.
“My whole life I’ve tried to help people,” he says. “Not intentionally. [Anheuser-Busch] was about educating and helping people. The seminars I’ve done. I still love doing those. I still love doing Bar Rescue. I love that hug at the end. That hug is friggin’ powerful. It’s amazing when you realize that the ones with the thickest head, who fight you the most, give you the biggest hug in the end, which means the tough ones are the ones it’s worth fighting against even harder. Because when they flip, they really flip.”
When Taffer sat down with Craveworthy, he wanted to bring his community-driven concept to more people. He sees similarities between Bar Rescue and how he hopes Taffer’s Tavern will resonate. “I look at a lot of friends in reality TV,” he says. “They BS the audiences. They set stuff up. They lie. They put scripts in. I don’t do any of that. I have too much respect for the audience. I think that’s why I’m on TV and I think restaurant operators are the same way. If you really respect your customers and you respect your employees, that’s when you have success.”
This moment for Taffern’s Tavern, he adds, arrives at an interesting time for hospitality. Younger consumers are, as data shows, cutting back alcohol consumption and, generally, just aren’t as driven toward socialization as they used to it, Taffer says. The pandemic separated people. It isn’t like it was before, when teenagers flocked to, say, Starbucks, to congregate. They can do so virtually now.
But Taffer believes “America is better when we sit face-to-face.” He hopes Taffer’s Tavern can play a small role in helping get that back. “People get along better when we do so,” Taffer says. “We can disagree much more civilly. Online is a … free for all. So how do we get people face-to-face? I like to think Taffer’s Tavern can.”
