Explore Quotes by Jon Taffer

You give me someone with the right personality, and I'll give you a bar manager in three weeks. You give me someone who has been a lousy bar manager for 30 years, and in three weeks, you'll still have a lousy bar manager.

Any business, no matter what it is, lives or dies by the customer reaction it creates.

I was 12 years old and in summer camp. I started a company called Aardvark Industries, which provided basic services to camp counselors.

Nine out of ten people who are failing blame their failure on somebody else. And that is the common denominator of failure.

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.

I do a lot of corporate consulting work. I've been doing it a long time.

When you're finished, bars are not inherently profitable. You got to work at them to make them profitable.

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.

Bars can't be everything to everyone. They must be everything to someone.

The gift of giving and paying it forward has always been traits I consider to be invaluable.

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.

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!

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.

You have to connect with your market and your employees. First, understand that what your market says is fact and what you say is opinion. Then, take the time to create a good connection with your employees. Without those two key connections, your business will be stuck in mediocrity forever.

Society is causing us to talk less and interact more digitally. So, I'd be remiss if I didn't believe that businesses will have to follow that same path.

People don't go to bars they think are uncool.

The 'hottest bar in town,' to me, means high energy.

I opened my first bar that I owned in 1989. The first one I ever owned was in downtown St. Louis.

People connect to a good bar very personally.

One of my first bartending gigs was on Santa Monica Boulevard at Doug Weston's Troubadour, a very famous live music venue.

The whole point of a bar is, I look in your eyes, you look in my eyes, we've never met each other before, we talk, we get to know each other, have a drink together, and the great end of that story is we get married someday.