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In a typical episode, Taffer’s team uses hidden cameras and undercover customers to identify a bar or restaurant’s weak spots. He then meets with the business owners and staff to present plans on how to improve operations. Staff undergo training, the menu gets rewritten and construction crews redesign, and sometimes rename, the bar or restaurant.

The final product is revealed only days later at a grand reopening, where patrons are served at the new and improved business.

Formerly named Slotzy’s, owner Nick Lang had inherited the bar, at 7708 State Route 4 in Worden, Illinois, from his father in 2022. Lang said business had been “stagnant,” so he reached out to the Bar Rescue team in January 2024 for help keeping his father’s legacy going.

The episode was filmed last June and Lang said the entire process was like what appears on television.

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

Lang said his bar “failed miserably” during the Bar Rescue stress test when serving a packed house of demanding customers pushes a bar or restaurant to the limit, revealing its weak points. Taffer yelled at Lang and the bar staff, but “he’s not angry for no reason,” Lang said.

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

The Bar Rescue team then remodeled the interior of the bar to give it a speakeasy, mobster feel. Lang said construction took 36 hours, and at times, 50 contractors were on site. The restaurant is about 40 miles east of 51����.

Taffer renamed Slotzy’s as Vitale’s Hideaway, after 51���� mobster John Vitale, and gave the kitchen recipes for signature menu items like homemade mobster meatballs, smoking gun wings, pulled pork and cheese cannolis.

The new, more family-friendly bar reopened last June. Since reopening under the rebrand, Lang said the Vitale’s Hideaway has seen new customers every day. Vitale’s Hideaway has since expanded its food and drink menu and recently launched a comedy show on the last Saturday of every month.

Lang said he’s excited to see the uptick in business the Bar Rescue episode will soon bring. “We were told by the producers that once the show airs, the floodgates will open,” Lang said.

“If you stay the course and you follow the tools that they’ve given to you (you’ll succeed),” he said.

This isn’t the first time Bar Rescue has featured 51���� area establishments. The show filmed an episode last summer at Brothers on Main, a locally-owned American restaurant in St. Clair, which aired in April. Also this spring, episodes featuring The Airliner in East Alton, CJ’s Pub and Grill in Smithton and The Fireplace in unincorporated west 51���� County have aired.

Tower Grove East’s Crafted (previously Van Goghz Martini Bar and Bistro) was revamped by Taffer in a 2016 episode.

The show has also featured O’Kelley’s Irish Pub (renamed Pastimes on 4th) in the city’s downtown neighborhood and City Bistro (renamed The Beechwood) in Benton Park West. Both have since closed.

Vitale’s Hideaway will appear on Bar Rescue on June 29 at 9 p.m. on Paramount Plus.