Jon Taffer describes himself repeatedly on Bar Rescue as one of the world’s best bar consultants, and that seems pretty accurate. His track record speaks for itself, and you can tell by watching the show that he really knows what he’s looking for. He surrounds himself with some of the best experts in the industry, and gets results. Here are a few lessons we can all learn from Jon Taffer and apply in our own bars.

1: Learn to Pour Accurately

Regardless of whether you free pour or use jiggers, the amount leaving the bottle should match the recipe and it should all end up in the drink, not on the bar top or in the drip tray. Learn to pour accurately, cut cleanly and make sure the guest gets the value they’re paying for while the bar doesn’t use more stock than it needs to.

2: Keep it Simple

Sprawling and overly complex menus for both food and drinks make your product harder to produce consistantly, increase stock holding and can slow service, as well as confusing the guest with more options than they can handle. Think like Apple, choose the best options for your customers and only feature those to reduce option fatigue.

3: Take Pride in Cleanliness

Every bar should be clean and safe to work in, so look at your bar from the guest’s perspective as well as ripping apart the insider to combat fruit flies, stickiness and worse… as seen on almost every episode of Bar Rescue! (Steve Darwin’s guest post on cleaning)

4: Don’t hire your family or friends

Hiring someone you already have a relationship with makes any potential issues down the line if they don’t perform well really hard to handle, so make sure you hire on merit in the first place. You’re allowed to like the team you work with, but remember you’re running a business not a charity!

5: Stack orders to reduce workload

Taking multiple orders means you can effectively make less drinks, just larger drinks. You cut time at every stage by grabbing multiple beers, blending and shaking multiple cocktails and generally looking pretty badass (see this article on becoming a multi-serving Jedi!)

Get Jon Taffer’s book at the link below… Highly recommended!

Raise the Bar: An Action-Based Method for Maximum Customer Reactions

Tips for Tips

Clean Bar tops all around!

Drink of the Week

Sour Drinks:

* 50ml / 1½oz Spirit or Liquer

* Juice of 1 lemon

* Dash Angostura  Bitters

* ½ / ¾oz Simple Syrup (to taste)

Shake with ice and Strain over fresh in a rocks glass.