Jon Taffer

“Bars are about experience and interaction; so often, the people make the bar.”

“I think the greatest mistakes have been my greatest lessons.”

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

“I think everybody thinks they can have the next $100 million venue. I think there is a bit of arrogance in that.”

“I went to college for political science and got a bartending job.”

“You ever see a bar with 200 beautiful women go broke? But I've seen a lot of bars with great DJs go broke.”

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

“I could take a cemetery and make all the tombstones beer companies. There's a lot of craft beers that came and went. A lot of them.”

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

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

“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.”

“When you're on-stage, you're expected to perform in the bar business. You shake hands. You smile. You're all positive energy: you add to your environment. When you walk in the door to the back of the house, that's like a stage door. You're off-stage now.”

“A bar is a factory, a marketing organization, and a service organization all in one.”

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

“Great negotiations happen when people are relaxed, so a relaxing environment is important. A high-energy environment tenses people up. It closes them up. You're not as likely to get that concession.”

“In the worst of our recession, bars were making money. Every bar can make money. If they're failing, it's not because of the president or Congress or Ukraine. It's because of them. And if you own failure, then you'll own success.”

“In my extensive experience, I can honestly say that Sculpture Hospitality's inventory solutions are world class and, by far, the most comprehensive in the industry.”

“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.”

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

“What I love about Vegas is that we have the mountains and the Strip. There is always something to do.”