Words matter. These are the best Jon Taffer Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
If I’m your boss, and I truly want you to be successful… I’m inherently going to teach you. I’m inherently going to correct your mistakes. I’m inherently going to spend time with you. I’m inherently going to lead you.
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.
When a sizable group of customers speak, I always listen! The ‘customers’ view’ is key to my confidence in decisions.
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.
When I’m angry on TV, I’m actually not. I’m manipulating you as an owner.
Excuses destroy success every time.
Great negotiations happen when people are relaxed, so a relaxing environment is important. A high-energy environment tenses people up. It closes them up. You’re not as likely to get that concession.
Most people who get into the business are social animals by nature, but do they have the financial abilities to manage a business? A great bar owner has both.
I’m the type of employer who will hire based on personality, based on potential. If you put the resume before the personality, you’re going to fail.
The simple things can be really powerful.
The fact of the matter is that the most important responsibility a bar owner has is public safety and the safety of the people in it.
I believe that a cook in a kitchen isn’t producing an entree: he’s producing a reaction. The product is the reaction; the entree is just the vehicle.
Too many bar owners built a bar for themselves… when they should have built what their market and demographic demands!
I believe that every person’s failure is their fault, every single time.
I have a playroom with my drum set, a guitar, and amplifier at home.
I think everybody thinks they can have the next $100 million venue. I think there is a bit of arrogance in that.
If you have to signal a bartender to get a drink, then they’re not looking at you, which is their problem. They’re not doing their job. So don’t feel rude when you signal a bartender. They’re the ones who caused you to signal them. Go for it.
The greatest gift of leadership is a boss who wants you to be successful.
Leadership cannot be taught. Either you’re a leader by the time you’re 12 years old, or you never will be.
Failure is an awful thing, and when I look at the common denominator of failure, it seems to always be the same thing: excuses.
I’m a really happy guy. I have a great career, a wonderful wife and family.
Honestly, if I could be anything, I’d love to be a small-business authority type of person.
I think the greatest mistakes have been my greatest lessons.
Cocktails and food are social.
I think life takes circles sometimes.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t want to hire people who have less of a commitment than I do.
If I were to pick the life of someone whom I professionally mimic in many ways, it would be Howard Hughes, surprisingly.
I can’t believe the sense of community here, the amount of pride the people who run this city have in Las Vegas. They are wonderful.
Each ‘Bar Rescue’ is shot in real time. So the complete rescue is 5 days from my arrival to my departure. I do not see or meet anyone in advance.
I do a lot of corporate consulting work. I’ve been doing it a long time.
I can change businesses, but I can’t change people.
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!
People don’t go to bars they think are uncool.
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.
One of my first bartending gigs was on Santa Monica Boulevard at Doug Weston’s Troubadour, a very famous live music venue.
People connect to a good bar very personally.
Revenue cures everything in the business world.
I’ve always said that my greatest crises are my greatest opportunities to prove my own character to myself.
I opened my first bar that I owned in 1989. The first one I ever owned was in downtown St. Louis.
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.
I was 12 years old and in summer camp. I started a company called Aardvark Industries, which provided basic services to camp counselors.
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.
If your main reason for opening a bar is to have somewhere for you and your friends to hang out, then build a bar in your basement, and stay out of the industry.
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.
You ever see a bar with 200 beautiful women go broke? But I’ve seen a lot of bars with great DJs go broke.
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.
What I love about Vegas is that we have the mountains and the Strip. There is always something to do.
You can tell within a second of entering a bar if it’s a place you should spend your time.
The infusion of technology and social marketing to bar spaces is a big opportunity.
Leadership is a trait; it’s not a skill.
In the bar and restaurant industry, you’re always one idea away from your next quarter-million.
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.
