(keep reading to learn what happened)
Season: 9 | View All Season 9 Episodes
Original Episode Air Date: March 30, 2025
The Bar's Original Name Was: Backroads Bar & Grill
Taylor's Tavern Address: 15217 Apollo Dr, Holly, MI 48442
Episode Recap
Backroads Bar & Grill, later renamed to Taylor’s Tavern Bar & Kitchen, was a Holly, Michigan bar that was featured on Season 9 of Bar Rescue.
Though the Taylor’s Tavern Bar Rescue episode aired in March 2025, the actual filming and visit from Bar Rescue took place before that in May 2024.
It was Season 9 Episode 28 and the episode name was “Backroads to Ruin”.
In this episode, Bar Rescue is back in Michigan for the second time in this set of Season 9.
This is despite the episode description once again saying it’s set in “Minnesota”.
It seems like wheoever writes the episode descriptions for Paramount doesn’t understand that “MI” stands for Michigan and not Minnesota.
Regardless, the show will be in Holly, Michigan, a village that’s located to the northwest of Detroit.
The show is in town to rescue Backroads Bar & Grill.
Unfortunately, Jon Taffer will not be leading the rescue.
Instead, lead rescuer duties will be handled by Phil Wills, a long-time expert on the show who has done several rescues himself now.
The bar is owned by Tina Helton, whose family is also involved in running and managing Backroads Bar.
To recon the bar, Phil sent in some local media personalities – Josh Holleman and Julia Lepidi.
The two order some basic drinks – a Rum Old Fashioned and a Dirty Martini.
Despite being a small, basic order, Phil complains that the bartenders have to split the order up between them when making the drinks.
I guess the issue here is that it’s inefficient and needlessly complicated.
When Phil and the expert watch the bartender make the Old Fashioned, they find a lot of issues with how she makes it.
When the spies receive the drinks, they also have more problems.
For example, the dirty martini is served in a regular glass and has a straw.
The other spy, Josh, finds that there’s “nothing old fashioned” about his drink.
After ordering their drinks, the spies move on to food.
They order a cheeseburger with fries and a Philly cheesesteak, which I assume won’t come out very well.
That’s it for my recap for now since I’m writing this the day before the episode aired on TV.
However, I will try to find some time to come back and make this more detailed after the episode airs on TV.
I do know what concept Phil decided to put in, though.
As part of the rescue, Phil Wills decided to give the bar a new name alongside the renovation.
He change it from Backroads Bar & Grill to Taylor’s Tavern Bar & Kitchen.
It also got a brand new look, along with new systems in place to make all of the staff more efficient (as usual!).
So – was the Backroads Bar Rescue episode a long-term success?
Keep reading my update to learn what happened next and if this Holly, Michigan bar is still open in 2025.
Taylor's Tavern Update - What Happened Next?
Now that I’ve recapped the episode, let’s talk about how the newly named Taylor’s Tavern is doing after Phil Wills and the Bar Rescue crew left town.
I’ll start by talking about whether the bar is still open and using the concept from Phil Wills.
Then, I’ll look at some real customer reviews from after the rescue and share any other relevant details that I can find.
But first, I want to highlight that the bar did host a watch party when its episode aired on TV.
I always like to see whether or not a bar hosted a watch party because I think it gives insight into whether or not the owners had a good experience on Bar Rescue.
In addition to hosting the watch party, Tina also told a local news publication that the Bar Rescue experience was “fantastic”.
Now, let’s get into the other details.
Is Taylor’s Tavern still open after Bar Rescue?
As of my most recent check, Taylor’s Tavern is still open and serving customers in Holly, Michigan.
What’s more, they seem to have embraced the new Taylor’s Tavern concept from Phil Wills and continue to operate under that name.
The bar is active on its Facebook page, regularly posting about events and specials at the bar.
To start, they seem to have live music at Taylor’s Tavern pretty regularly, which is cool to see.
Based on a lot of the posts I saw, they seem to host these live events on Saturday nights.
For example, they recently had a band named Lopsider play at the bar.
In addition to music, I also saw a post from them advertising standup comedy, which is another fun live event.
They also have karaoke every Thursday and Friday night, which is something you’ll see at a lot of bars that were featured on the show.
Other than the karaoke and live music, they mainly just seem to post about food and drink specials.
They did seem to also host a weekly poker night at some point, though I’m not sure if that’s still ongoing in 2025 as I haven’t seen them post about it in a while.
In addition to posting on the bars Taylor’s Tavern Facebook page, they also still continue to post on the old Backroads Facebook page.
Here’s what the Taylor’s Tavern location looks like in the most recent picture from Google Maps street view…
The picture hasn’t been updated since 2018, so it still shows the old Backroads Bar & Grill branding.
I’m mainly including it so that you can explore the area around the bar (it’s in a small shopping mall).
Taylor’s Tavern reviews after Bar Rescue
Next, let’s take a look at some real customer reviews for Taylor’s Tavern from after Phil Wills implemented his changes.
I love doing this because it lets us see how the bar is doing after the show and whether or not they’ve kept the show’s systems in place.
Overall, the bar has a 4.1 star rating on 13+ Google reviews. It has yet to receive a review on Yelp so far.
Unlike a lot of other bars on the show, Taylor’s Tavern opted to create brand new profiles after its rebrand, so all of those reviews have been written after the show’s changes.
A lot of other bars will just rename their existing profiles, so you’ll see a lot of reviews from before Bar Rescue came.
A 4.1 star rating on Google definitely isn’t the best that I’ve seen, but it’s also not the worst.
Only a few of the reviews have text, so it’s hard to draw any real conclusions.
Most of the positive reviews compliment the burgers and staff.
A couple of the negative reviews complain about the kitchen closing early or issues with service.
I wasn’t able to find a lot of reviews with text, but here are some examples that I did find:
4 star review:
Two negative reviews about service:
Final thoughts on the episode
Overall, Taylor’s Tavern seems to be doing ok so far.
They’ve embraced the name change from Phil Wills and reviews seem to be generally positive, if not amazing.
They also have regular live music and karaoke at the bar, which seems like a great way to bring in people.
That wraps up my Taylor’s Tavern Bar Rescue update.
If you want to see some other Michigan episodes from the show, you can check out my updates for Pete’s Butcher Block / Pete’s Cutting Board in Chesterfield, The Arena in Ann Arbor, Jazz Katz / Backbeat Piano Bar in Southfield, Chix on Dix / Power Strip in Detroit, and Proving Ground / The Hooch in Dearborn Heights.
And if you want to share your thoughts on the episode, you can do so using the comments section below.
As always – thanks for reading!
More Information
https://www.yelp.com/biz/taylors-tavern-hollyhttps://www.facebook.com/p/Taylors-Tavern-61569007411894/
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Last updated: 2025-03-31 08:39