SeedSing

View Original

Ty Watches Bar Rescue: Schaffer's Bar Edition

"Bar Rescue" this past weekend had some stuff on it that I had never seen before.

Taffer and crew traveled to "Schaeffer's Bar" in some small town in Washington state. This bar was the talk of the town when it first opened. According to the first owner, they were making upwards of one million dollars a year. He said that he couldn't count his money fast enough. After the third year of making a lot of money, 2 outside buyers came in and bought the bar from the first owner. They paid a hefty sum for it too. For some inexplicable reason, they asked the first owner to stay on as a manager. I've never heard about anything like this ever. I just assumed that when you sell, you leave it to the new owners, but that was not the case. The guy stayed on, but he had clearly mailed in his effort after selling. The bar started to tank with the two new owners too. Neither had any real experience being owners, so they had little to no idea how to run a bar. They also believed that the original owner was sabotaging their bar so he could buy it back at a much lower price.

When Taffer came with the experts, he sent them in the bar and had one of the new owners come and watch from his car. He wanted her to see how poorly the bar was being run. First thing they both saw, the bartenders had to look up how to make drinks. They had no idea how to make the simplest of drinks. Entry level stuff was foreign to them. The next thing they saw was the kitchen staff being highly disgusting. They weren't spitting in food or anything, but they were touching uncooked meat with bare hands, then touching other stuff. There was cross contamination everywhere. Then, they both saw how long ticket times were. The two experts ordered a medium temperature steak and a medium rare burger, and it took over 45 minutes for both to come out. That should have been 15 minutes tops. The food was also a total mess. The burger was well done, the steak was undercooked and the nachos were gross. The whole bar was a mess. At one point, one of the bartenders got so upset at the drink orders from the experts, she quit. The owner that was in the car with Taffer rushed to try and stop her, but to no avail. To quit a job because of this is ridiculous.

Finally, after all the nonsense, Taffer came in and laid down the law. He crushed the bartenders and the owners. He slammed the kitchen staff for their poor work and the uncleanliness of the kitchen, it was disgusting. He also attacked the former owner and said he agreed with the new owners that he may be sabotaging them. It was classic Taffer stuff.

When they finally cleaned everything up and got ready fro stress test, this was another time I saw a first for me on "Bar Rescue". The stress test was going as usual, terrible, and one of the new owners shut down the bar before Taffer could. She told everyone that they were done for the night, and that the bar was closed. Taffer was shocked, as was I.

The next day Taffer talked about how that had never happened before, and that it showed weakness. This kind of woke up both the new owners. They now seemed on board with Taffer and his plans. They even amicably parted ways with the former owner. It was nice to see that for a change. No one was forced to fire anyone, they both mutually agreed that it would be for the best.

We then got the big reveal of the new bar. The name was changed from "Schaeffer's" to "R.Lee's". I don't get the name, but it had something to do with the names of the new owners. Whatever. Everyone seemed to like all the changes, but one of the owners was not happy. She wanted to keep the sports bar esthetic, but Taffer went a different way. She was visible upset at what Taffer and crew had done. She let it be known that she was upset as well. Taffer left after this, thinking all was good. The bar, during reopen, seemed to be doing well, and they looked like they could be profitable.

When they went to do the 6 week checkup, we came to find out that they changed the name back to "Schaeffer's", and the new owners refused to talk on camera. They even tried to get the old owner back because they didn't seem to think they could handle doing all the work by themselves. The old owner did the right thing and refused to come back, and we may never know what happened at "Schaeffer's". These people thought they wanted change, but they just clearly wanted to be on TV.

This was a waste of Taffer, his experts and Spike TV's time. I do not like when bar owners do this type of stuff. It is tacky and pointless. I do not know when the next episode is on, but I know that I will be here to review it for you.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. He hates restaurant name changes, like St. Louis Bread Company being called Panera. Follow Ty on instagram and twitter.

SeedSing is funded by a group of generous donors. Join them by donating to SeedSing.