Raise the Bar

An interesting read, made more so by the fact that I enjoy Taffer's television show. John Taffer has an exercises a number of good ideas related to doing business generally. For example, his thoughts on four-walls marketing certainly apply to the bar/hospitality business, but also apply to other retail and commercial offerings. Those in consultancies can certain embody the services they provide as well as integrate walking the talk into numerous facets of their business.

I appreciate Taffer's reliance on data. It shows that he is well-read and personally vested in the industry in which he has chosen to work. The sources and types of data he mentions in this book also shows creative interpretations of seemingly bland data. Taffer has a way of making demographics come to life.

This book suffers from what I like to call the “snapshot in time” phenomena. Many of Taffer's examples from television (e.g., America Live) are all over the Internet as failed conversions and the former owners have gone on to negatively relate their experiences on the show. These issues do not affect the validity of the example Taffer is making in the book; they simply create incongruities in the value the reader assigns to the topic being exemplified. Think - if it worked that well, would the business have closed? The answer, of course, is that myriad factors play into the closure of a business and, if there is anything that Bar Rescue teaches, it is clear that businesses on that show had a number of problems at the onset.