Bar Rescue, the show on Spike TV about horrible, failing bars getting fixed up into respectable businesses, would be nothing without its leader, Jon Taffer. This man is about the angriest television host since Gordon Ramsay on Hell’s Kitchen, and some might argue that he’s even angrier. But, behind all that anger is excellent business acumen and a genuine desire to help struggling bar owners fix up their businesses and get it on the path to being the shining example of what a bar could be, even if it does mean a little tough love from time to time.
Still, if it weren’t for the tough love, the show wouldn’t be nearly as fun. And, amidst all the yelling, cockroach exterminating, and breaking up of bar fights, Taffer actually hands out quite a few sick burns and funny one-liners. Here are some of the funniest things he’s said, from the transparently hilarious quips to the deep quotes that were said with a hint of comedy.
“What is the one thing that 43% of men prefer over sex? Bacon!”
On Bar Rescue, one of the most common things Jon Taffer has to do is revamp or completely reimagine a bar’s menus. When you create a food menu, though, you have to keep your audience in mind. You wouldn’t serve the same meal at an Irish pub as you would at a bar for college students; the people coming to those bars expect different things.
Frequently, if the bar is one that caters to a largely male audience, like a sports bar or a billiards bar, Taffer will pull out this little statistic. There’s no real way to know if the numbers are accurate, but the logic behind it is sound—and pretty funny.
“If you had a dime for every excuse you made, I wouldn’t have to be here right now.”
Jon Taffer is most famously quoted as saying, “I don’t embrace excuses, I embrace solutions.” When he whips out a saying like that on the opener for his TV show, you can bet that he hears a ton of excuses, most of them being ridiculously lame.
People will say that they were going to clean the kitchen tomorrow, or that they didn’t know their bar was full of bugs, or try to blame their employees for problems at the bar. There’s no doubt, Taffer has heard them all. And he’s probably right: even given how much money he’s probably made doing Bar Rescue, if he got paid ten cents for every excuse he heard instead, he’d probably have even more than that.
“When I talk to idiots, I get loud!”
This appears to be a universal axiom among television foodservice personalities—just look at Gordon Ramsay. Anybody who watches Bar Rescue can tell you that, when Taffer knows he’s not getting through to someone, he’ll start yelling.
And, based on the amount of yelling he does on any given episode, he has to interact with quite a few idiots. Honestly, he must have some insane vocal chops from all of the yelling he does on the show. We hope he’s doing vocal warmups before every consultation!
“The word ‘mixology’ adds $3 to the price of any drink.”
This quote is particularly funny because it’s so true. If you’ve ever been to a bar with the word ‘mixology’ on the menu, it means that your drinks are going to be more expensive. People might complain about this, but, really, it makes sense. A certified mixologist has probably done a lot more work on their craft than your average bartender, and with that experience come increased quality.
“Don’t eat the bar nuts.”
“Never eat anything out of a bowl in a bar. If it isn’t packaged, don’t eat it.” Jon Taffer has seen more than his fair share of gross, greasy, buggy bars with unsanitary employees and disgusting conditions. You might think it’s nice to be at a bar that puts out a free bowl of peanuts or pretzels for customers, but you never know who’s been touching it or where their hands have been. Better safe than sorry.
Besides, those snacks are just out there to make you more thirsty so you order another drink, anyway.
“I’d call you a douchebag, but that’s offensive to every douchebag I’ve ever met.”
This is probably one of the sickest burns Taffer ever gave, and it’s even sicker when you are a regular Bar Rescue watcher and have seen the full scope of jerky bar owners, employees, and patrons he has met over his time hosting it.
There have been a lot of owners who have been sexist, rude, dismissive of their employees, unfaithful to their wives, you name it, but the one that took the cake was a bar owner who got so drunk at work that he passed out on one of the bar’s couches. Yikes.
“I don’t really wanna smell you right now.”
In one of many instances on Bar Rescue where Jon Taffer had to whip a bar owner into shape in order for him to get his bar running the way it should be, Taffer was listing off all of the things that this particular owner needed to do when the very drunk guy decided to get very close and confrontational with Jon, saying he was going to prove him wrong. Taffer’s response was, simply: “Get your alcohol breath out of my face and prove it to me tomorrow, because I don’t really wanna smell you right now.”
“You, my friend, are an a**hole.”
It’s always funny when somebody managed to be chummy and yet insult someone in the same breath. On this particular occasion, a bar owner had claimed to Taffer that he had never met a female bartender who could do the job as well as a man.
After Taffer’s friend Mia smoked the man in a drink-making competition, he refused to admit how good she was. At that point, there was really nothing left to say to him. What else do you say to someone who is so clearly prideful and wrong-minded?
“I’m a really happy guy.”
This quote isn’t funny on its own, but after watching any episode of Bar Rescue and seeing how angry Taffer gets, it becomes quite amusing.
The thing is, Taffer said this about how angry he gets on the show. He said that, when he does yell at a bar manager, he’s not actually doing it because he’s so angry that he can’t control himself. Instead, he does it because he’s been dealing with people like that long enough to know that, if you yell, you can make them react in a way that they normally wouldn’t, and then, later, they can see themselves on camera acting like a fool and feel ashamed. That’s actually a really good tactic—and it doesn’t hurt that yelling is good for ratings, either.
“On ‘Bar Rescue’ I got exposed to failure at a very deep level.”
This one is funny on the surface because the very concept of being exposed to failure on a deep level is funny enough that there’s a whole show based around it.
Still, Jon Taffer has said that, in his life, he’s been lucky enough to achieve a lot of success. Yet, the thing is, you can become even more successful if you see failure and understand what causes it. When you see all the different ways someone can fail up close, you learn to understand how to avoid making their mistakes, and you also get a better scope of all the things that can go wrong. In a way, Taffer is explaining that doing Bar Rescue helped him become even more successful by teaching him about failure in a hundred different ways.
