Some of the bars featured on Bar Rescue have managed to take Taffer’s advice and have remained open even years after the host’s initial visit.
Bar Rescue follows Jon Taffer as he attempts to intervene and save various failing bars, located all throughout the country.
Taffer has visited over 200 restaurants over the course of Bar Rescue’s eight seasons, and it turns out that he does have some favorite success-stories.
All about Bar Rescue
Jon Taffer’s Bar Rescue has been on the air since 2011, and it has now seen this accomplished consultant lend his expertise in the food and beverage industry to over 200 businesses in the United States.
Taffer and his team often have to overhaul everything from the bar’s interior decorations and its menu, to the owners’ business sense during their emergency interventions.
But there is no denying that watching these businesses be completely transformed over the course of just a few days makes for incredibly entertaining television.
These are the most successful bars from Bar Rescue
The bars featured on Bar Rescue are never in good shape when Taffer and his team of industry experts arrive to intervene. And Taffer has never been shy about admitting that there are some businesses which are just too far gone to save.
Taffer keeps close tabs on the bars featured on Bar Rescue, and some sources have even reported that he receives regular updates about the sales numbers of all of the bars which have been featured on the show throughout the years.
Whether or not this is true – Bar Rescue does have one of the best success rates of any of the business-rescue-type shows on television. In fact, Reality TV Updates estimates that Bar Rescue’s current success rate is about 48%.
Even so, it turns out that Taffer has some personal favorite bars, whose continued success he considers to be some of his biggest accomplishments in the show’s history.
This includes Big Mike’s Sports Bar and Grill, MoonRunners Saloon and Spirits on Bourbon, which have all managed to improve their businesses considerably after Taffer’s visit and are all still operational in 2023.
Big Mike’s Sports Bar and Grill
Big Mike’s Sports Bar and Grill was featured in a Bar Rescue episode called “Bar Over Troubled Water”, which aired in the show’s fifth season in 2017.
While most of the bars that Taffer visits on Bar Rescue are in bad shape when he arrives, Big Mike’s Sports Bar and Grill had been devastated by a flood which affected most of the Baton Rouge region just months prior to the filming crews arriving, thus, the space needed to be almost entirely gutted before it could be re-launched.
However, it seems like Taffer’s emergency intervention was enough to get Big Mike’s Sports Bar and Grill back up on its feet, and the business even saw a 50 percent increase in sales after the episode aired.
Big Mike’s Sports Bar and Grill is still getting fairly positive reviews to this day, with a 3.6 out of 5 star rating on Yelp.
MoonRunners Saloon
MoonRunners Saloon is another name that longtime Bar Rescue fans may not necessarily immediately recognize from the show.
When Taffer and his team first visited this bar, in the show’s third season (in the “Characters Assassination” episode which aired in 2013), it was operating under the “Characters Quarters” name.
After Taffer’s visit, the business at MoonRunners Saloon improved considerably. Sales went up by approximately 50 percent, and the business has now even branched out into mobile food service with a food truck.
MoonRunners Saloon seems to be quite popular with the North Carolina locals today and the bar currently has a 4.2 out of 5 star rating on Yelp.
Spirits on Bourbon
When Spirits on Bourbon was first featured on the third season of Bar Rescue all the way back in 2013, the business was operating as “Turtle Bay.”
But even though the name on the sign has changed at this Louisiana bar, it seems like business is still booming, almost a decade later.
Taffer confirmed in a Z100 New York interview from 2022 that the bar’s sales went up by more than $1 million in the year following the Bar Rescue visit, and that the bar has maintained this success throughout the years.
Avid Bar Rescue fans will also be happy to hear that Spirits on Bourbon still serves their signature “The Resurrection” flashing blue cocktail, which Taffer introduced as part of the Spirits on Bourbon overhaul in the “Turtle on Its Back” episode.
Spirits on Bourbon currently has a 3.4 out of 5 star rating on Yelp from over 400 reviews.
