Jon Taffer has hosted Bar Rescue for more than a decade and runs Taffer’s Tavern. He tells Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi he doesn’t think of himself as being in the restaurant business at all: "the product is the reaction," not the food or the drink. That philosophy runs through the rest of the conversation, including the exact arithmetic behind every menu price increase (a dollar of extra cost becomes three dollars on the menu), why he designs bars so every customer’s eyes sit at the same height, and why he thinks Gen Z stopped going out as much. Taffer discloses on camera that TGI Fridays was a client of his for many years. All figures in this interview are his own.
Timestamps
0:00 "That’s why I scream and yell at them"
1:18 The $27 pour, and what GLP-1 is doing to portion sizes
3:27 Why $1 of cost becomes $3 on the menu
4:46 Food and labor are 65% before the rent
6:52 Cultural anthropology, and why he yells
8:11 How Browned Butter Bourbon got made
10:10 The bar science: Eye heights, elevations and the butt funnel
12:53 "I’m not in the restaurant business, I’m in a reaction business"
14:33 Where AI belongs, and where it does not
15:33 Why Gen Z missed the minor leagues
17:43 Every trend ends, and the steakhouse outlasts them all
19:45 Theo, the dishwasher in the sharkskin suit
21:06 How much rope people get
22:13 The napkin that took tips from 22% to 30%
23:15 Fridays, Red Lobster, and selling the real estate
#Restaurants #Inflation #PowerPlayers #YahooFinance
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