Jon Taffer
Eating something with someone is the second most sensual and intimate thing you can do in life. The experience can't just be about consumption.Collection: Experience
A plate of food hits the table, lands right in front of you. One of two things happens. Either you sit up and look at it and react to it, or nothing happens. If nothing happens then that restaurant is stuck in mediocrity forever.Collection: Food
Excuses destroy success every time.Collection: Time
If you can't build a relationship with your customers, you're in big trouble. If you can remember the numbers from the reports and spreadsheets you spent hours poring over in your office, but you can't picture the faces of your customers - you're in big trouble.Collection: Relationship
It's easy to be good when things are great; it's tough to be good when they're not.Collection: Great
In the worst of our recession, bars were making money. Every bar can make money. If they're failing, it's not because of the president or Congress or Ukraine. It's because of them. And if you own failure, then you'll own success.Collection: Failure
When you're on-stage, you're expected to perform in the bar business. You shake hands. You smile. You're all positive energy: you add to your environment. When you walk in the door to the back of the house, that's like a stage door. You're off-stage now.Collection: Smile
When my company does a good job, we make people happy. They laugh, they smile, they have a good time - that's what we do for a living. Any business doing that is making a noble effort.Collection: Smile
On 'Bar Rescue,' failure is not an option. I have to try to turn the business around.Collection: Failure
Failure is an awful thing, and when I look at the common denominator of failure, it seems to always be the same thing: excuses.Collection: Failure
Revenue cures everything in the business world.Collection: Business
The Knack were a very, very powerful band, and you got to understand, when they came in, all the punk stuff was still going on. There was an amazing conflict within the scenes.Collection: Amazing
I think success is a relative term. If you're a caveman, success is capturing an elephant. Success is achieving better than the norm. Success is being exceptional. It's exceptional reputation, exceptional income, and exceptional respect.Collection: Respect
The greatest gift of leadership is a boss who wants you to be successful.Collection: Leadership
Failure is an extremely personal thing, and so is success. The problem with people is they don't own their failure, and if you don't own your failures, you're never going to own your successes.Collection: Failure
I believe that every person's failure is their fault, every single time.Collection: Failure
Human interaction is something that I believe, as humans, we crave for. And that is where bars and social environments come into play.
In my extensive experience, I can honestly say that Sculpture Hospitality's inventory solutions are world class and, by far, the most comprehensive in the industry.
Don't build a bar for yourself. Build it for your customers. It's all about them: the walls, the finishes, the textures, the food, the beverages, literally everything has to be for them.
Bars can't be everything to everyone. They must be everything to someone.
The simple things can be really powerful.
Don't eat the bar nuts.
Bars are about experience and interaction; so often, the people make the bar.
Bar owners tend to be social rather than operators. Most bar owners do not manage their numbers. They do not have spreadsheets or reports to manage their budget, cost, or inventory. I would say 90% of independent bar owners do not even have a budget.
I think everybody thinks they can have the next $100 million venue. I think there is a bit of arrogance in that.
I think life takes circles sometimes.
I'm a businessman, not a bartender.
I've always said that my greatest crises are my greatest opportunities to prove my own character to myself.
I think the greatest mistakes have been my greatest lessons.
The gift of giving and paying it forward has always been traits I consider to be invaluable.
I was 12 years old and in summer camp. I started a company called Aardvark Industries, which provided basic services to camp counselors.
People see themselves on camera. They're ashamed of the things that they do, so they have a choice: Either they accept responsibility for it, or they blame the show for it. It's a human reaction.
Bars need to be conceived and built for the local audience, not the personal tastes of the owner. Huge mistakes are made with regard to market research and concepts. Research and capital are paramount!
When I was running the Troubadour, there was this transition from the classic singer/songwriter Jackson Browne types to bands like Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and Fear. Those are just some that come to mind. Oh, and Adam Ant! The Fear fans wanted to 'crush' the Ants. These guys hated each other.
I've made stupid investments. I've made stupid decisions as an employee. I've made foolish decisions as a manager. I've gotten fired. I've lost businesses. I went through all of those things.
When a sizable group of customers speak, I always listen! The 'customers' view' is key to my confidence in decisions.
When I meet with people who are ineffective managers with failing businesses, I can't change what they do - I have to change the way they think.
I can change businesses, but I can't change people.
I have no personal or professional regrets. I really don't.
A bar is a factory, a marketing organization, and a service organization all in one.
I'm a really happy guy. I have a great career, a wonderful wife and family.
Pushing for excellence is a fight. You have to fight to hire the right employees, fight to get the supplies you need, to move line items around. Being a great manager means pushing to get those few extra inches every day. It's almost like a football game - the team that wins sometimes wins by just inches.
Cocktails and food are social.
Putting somebody else in crisis mode and causing them to make quicker decisions, urgent decisions, rather than prolonged, more logical decisions can be very advantageous. So, to be successful in business, you have to understand the power of confrontation and how to use it correctly.
Any time a bar or chef cares more about their own ego than the tastes and comforts of their customers, they should just open a monument to themselves and not a business.
The word 'mixology' adds $3 to the price of any drink.
Government employees make a good amount of money - income levels are very high in Washington, D.C. compared to other markets, so they are living in a bubble.
I've traveled the world, and as an America,n I get insulted when people say American businesses aren't respected overseas. Look at how our food and beverage companies do around the world. We are regarded as the best at this. A lot of what we do here is exportable, and I don't think there's anybody that does it better in the whole world.
Keeping a bar clean is basic in this business. Having a staff that speaks adequate English is basic.
You can tell within a second of entering a bar if it's a place you should spend your time.