By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Friday, January 22, 2016
Tonight, bar/lounge Whiskey Blue in the Buckhead W Hotel will be featured on CBS's "Undercover Boss" at 8 p.m.
Amazingly, this show has managed to make it to season seven and 95 episodes despite the fact it can't possibly be that hard to figure out the ruse by now. We all know the concept: a CEO wears a bad wig and some facial hair (if he's a guy) and pretends to be someone he is not so he can hang out with select employees. Later, he'll reward said employees with trips or money or whatever they feel would help them out.
The show is still using the idea that it's a reality show where people are trying to win money to become entrepreneurs and are "training" to learn a particular business from the inside. Apparently, people are buying that.
CEO Scott Gerber of New York's Gerber Group owns 14 bars and lounges nationwide, including three in Atlanta inside W Hotels. Gerber himself didn't choose the locales or people he would hang with. The production company picked the employees and had him work with a few at Whiskey Blue, which has been around seven years. (The bar/lounge gets a 3.5 star rating out of 5 on Yelp.)
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
In an interview today, he said he wanted to get closer to his employees and hear their stories in a way they'd never tell him if they knew he was the boss.
He donned a beard and added hair extensions so he had a mullet. He was "Chris," a dude from Montana. (He grew the beard himself and said it was "very uncomfortable. I had to stay in costume for two weeks.")
Gerber said he did this show in part to honor his gregarious father Jordan, who helped found the company with his sons in the early 1990s but died six years ago. He also became friends with the employees more than Gerber, who focused on building the business. "My father was the soul of the business," he said on the show itself.
At Whiskey Blue, which he said is a top performer in the company, he tried his hand at cocktail service ("I was careful not to drop glasses on anybody") and bartending ("Never bartended before. I had to learn all the cocktails. At one point, someone asked for 10 mojitos and four other drinks at the same time. I was flustered!") He spent a lot of time with mixologist Casey Murphy. She will credit Danielle Camerata, the general manager, for turning her life around. "It was some amazing stuff," he said.
He hopes the bar's success is not just the drinks, the music and the atmosphere but ultimately the staff. "We don't want to be that hot trendy bar that people will drop after a minute and a half," he said. "We want people to come year after year."
After the show taped, he made some changes to make the employee's lives easier.
Gerber started a health and wellness program and had the company get involved with charities employees care about. "I want us to embrace our employees outside of work," he said. "It's going to come and pay you back in spades. When they go to work happier, they'll do a better job."
I've written about a few Atlanta-based companies over the years that have been on the show, including the folks who run Stone Mountain Park, Hooters, Moe's and Cinnabon. Other local companies on the show that I missed (or nobody told me in advance about) included Popeye's and Orkin.
TV PREVIEW
"Undercover Boss," 8 p.m. Fridays, CBS (this episode airs on Friday, January 22)
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