Yesterday the eventually inevitable occurred…

With a class structured around guest speaker presentations by practicing entrepreneurs, it is inevitable that you will–for any of hundreds of plausible reasons–have a day or two with no speaker. This is what happened with yesterday’s class.

But I had a backup–sometimes called in classes a “contingency” or “recovery”–plan…

I had been thinking for some time that showing and discussing a carefully selected episode of the Spike TV program Bar Rescue (http://www.spike.com/shows/bar-rescue) would make for a highly relevant and entertaining class meeting.

If you are not familiar with Bar Rescue, the series stars consultant Jon Taffer, a no-nonsense former bar and nightclub owner who has owned, flipped, or somehow “rescued” over 800 such businesses in his career. Taffer and his crew of expert bartenders, chefs, and designers is brought in by bar owners–entrepreneurs–to save their declining and often severly neglected and dysfunctionally run businesses. After a period of surveillance and consultation and training meetings, Taffer brings in local contractors and other service providers to renovate and update the facility (based on his extensive bar/restaurant marketing and management expertise).

I had for some time had one particular episode of Bar Rescue in mind for the class. Entitled “A Horse Walks Into a Bar,” it dramatically features the best and worst of entrepreneurship as portrayed on the show; a family business, drunken owners who seem to have given up, a young bartender daughter who seems to be the only person able and willing to save the business, pending foreclosure, over-pouring of alcohol and other rampant waste of resources, incompetent employees, poor customer service, lacking quality control in the kitchen, and a motorcycle and a horse–and, yes, horse poop–in the bar. But there is more… Tapper steps firmly in and, after an initial meeting that one of the intoxicated owners openly admits she did not remember attending and the abrupt departure of a poor-performing bartender called “Yum Yum,” turns things around and gets the family and their employees to fight for and at least temporarily save the business; all in four days of frantic and emotional activity jammed into 45 or so minutes of captivating–and in our case educational–reality TV entertainment.

The full episode can be seen at:

http://www.spike.com/episodes/nfs61t/bar-rescue-a-horse-walks-into-a-bar-season-3-ep-309

I now turn things over to today’s class blogger Cody Whiteside. Below, Cody does a fine job of capturing what was learned when Bar Rescue came to the rescue of the Midwest Entrepreneurs class.

Prof. Gabel

_______________________________________________________________

Rather than a traditional speaker, this class was centered on an episode from the Spike television show Bar Rescue, led by bar consultant John Taffer, mixologist Russell Davis, and chef J.B. Brown. Taffer took Arizona-based Kid Chilleen’s Badass BBQ and Steakhouse and turned the bar around in four days to help contain $180,000 in debt and avoid a bank foreclosure. By seeing a failing business, we get the other side of the story compared to our success stories from each of our speakers. This episode taught us what not to do and what to look for to turn a business around.

With the business being located off of a main interstate, most of the customers come from the highway traffic. What not to do was a theme of the failing business. No signs on the highway to attract customers, owner’s drunk while running the bar and giving away alcohol, poor outside lighting, and a glaring lack of control over both costs and employees was just a start to the long list of the ills of the failing business.

John Taffer came in and changed the atmosphere, layout, and attitude of the bar and the employees to save the family business. His first point of emphasis was that every successful bar owner doesn’t drink while on the job. He then led into what will attract the customer, keep them satisfied, and make them want to come back. He advertised on both sides of the interstate, changed the décor of the building to appeal to the customers eye, which included a lighted sign and parking lot, and engineered a new menu. The key to the menu is to box in the highest profit contributors, and shadow the second highest profit contributors. This draws the customer’s eyes to the best dishes in the restaurant, but also what will make the company the most money as well.

Professional bartender, Russell Davis, trained owner, Scott, and daughter, Aleah to the tricks of the trade behind the bar, and offered new, themed drinks to introduce to customers. He introduced moonshine as an option for the bar, and even a non-alcoholic drink for owners Scott and Donna to drink while on the job and still socialize with the customers.

Professional chef and barbeque expert, J.B. Brown, took the kitchen by storm and introduced the staff to real smoked barbeque. Authentic barbeque will keep customers coming back for more, while according to Taffer, 90% of barbeque restaurants across the country simply cover their baked food in sauce, rather than do what is necessary to produce real smoked barbeque dishes.

By seeing the hardships of a businessas we did in this episode of Bar Rescue, we can get a better understanding of what it takes to be able to be a well-rounded entrepreneur.

Many entrepreneurs face many obstacles and headaches of a business, but usually the biggest problem isn’t the owners themselves. In the case of Chilleen’s, the owner’s had to get themselves out of drinking problems to save their family business. If they can stay sober while running the bar and restaurant and otherwise stick to Taffer’s turnaround/rescue plan, they have a very good chance to get out of debt and turn their business around.

Cody Whiteside