‘Bar Rescue’ Subject Reveals If Show Is Staged and What Jon Taffer Is Really Like

Jon Taffer is saving yet another bar from closure.

Taffer’s television show Bar Rescue features the bar entrepreneur going into struggling bars and telling owners how to improve their businesses.

Nick Lang, owner of Worden, Illinois bar Slotzy’s, will be featured on an upcoming episode. He spoke with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about his experience on the series.

Lang applied to be on Bar Rescue in 2024 after inheriting the bar from his father in 2022, when business turned “stagnant.” His upcoming episode of the series was filmed last June.

“It was all raw. Nothing was staged,” Lang said. “It was a very cool experience, very emotional, very disruptive.”

In the series, Taffer’s team sets up hidden cameras and uses undercover customers to judge where a bar is failing. He then helps redesign the bar and the menu, and helps train staff.

Lang told the STL Post-Dispatch that his bar “failed miserably” at Taffer’s stress tests, and revealed the host yelled at Lang and the bar staff for their incompetence, saying Taffer wasn’t “angry for no reason.”

“He’s just like the show. He’s very direct, knows what he’s talking about,” Lang said. “If he’s yelling and screaming, it’s because you deserve it. He made us better at what we do.”

The Bar Rescue team brought in 50 contractors to remodel the bar into a mobster-themed speakeasy, and renamed the bar Vitale’s Hideaway after St. Louis mobster John Vitale. The kitchen’s menu also changed to produce new themed items, like mobster meatballs, cheese cannolis, and smoking gun wings.

Since Taffer and the Bar Rescue team left, Lang said the bar has been very successful.

The episode of Bar Rescue featuring Vitale’s Hideaway will air on June 29 at 9 PM on Paramount+.