Jon Taffer

THE HOSPITALITY LEGEND AND BRASH, IMPOSING STAR OF THE HIT SHOW

- Mike Sager

On his hit Spike TV show, Bar Rescue, where Taffer parachutes into entrepreneurs’ struggling bars to turn them around in three days, he is a looming, at times obnoxious presence—a man whose eyes bug out as he berates incompetent owners and employees. “I watched you pick up raw chicken all night with your hands and then touch cooked food!” he yells, grabbing and throwing a handful of tortilla chips for emphasis as the guilty party trembles before him.

Onstage at conferences, where Taffer, 64, gives keynotes about how to take control of a business, he yells during much of his presentation. Even his new book’s title screams from the cover: Don’t Bullsh*t Yourself!: Crush the Excuses That Are Holding You Back.

But therein lies the paradox of Jon Taffer. Having spent parts of two days following him around—to his office for meetings with a small group of longtime employees, eating expensive Wagyu beef on the Vegas Strip, flying to a distillery where he’s developing his own line of whiskey, driving around with his personal L.A. limo driver, meeting his Hollywood producer and his publicist—I never once saw him yell. (Though he does curse like a sailor.) Nor does anyone around him seem to be braced for an obscenity laced outburst.

So finally, I just ask. “You seem like a nice person,” I say. “Can you explain to me where all the yelling comes from?”

Taffer goes quiet while he thinks. We are hurtling through the cold air at 30,000 feet in his tan-on-brown corporate jet—a twin-engine, 1999 Hawker 800, with a custom leather interior modeled after that of a Bentley motorcar. For the past two days, he’s had a quick answer for everything. But this one stops him.