Enterprising Bar Owner Tommy Tardie Talks Bottle Keep Program, the Future of The Flatiron Room
The lounge area at Fine & Rare. (Photos: Goodnight Group)
If you live in New York City and frequent Midtown Manhattan bars with excellent whiskey selections, there’s a good chance you’ve been to Fine & Rare and/or The Flatiron Room.
Both bars are under the umbrella of Goodnight Group, which Whisky Magazine named the world’s best bar group of 2022.
Goodnight Group and The Flatiron Room were founded in 2012 by Tommy Tardie, an ex-creative director who departed Madison Avenue and the ad world to create in a new way. Five years later, things were going well, so Tardie expanded, opening Fine & Rare about a mile northeast of his first bar.
Earlier this month, Tardie announced that Fine & Rare will be no more. The location will be converted into a second Manhattan Flatiron Room location, in a move made to “expand the Flatiron Room brand.” The original location, The Flatiron Room Nomad, will be joined by The Flatiron Room Murray Hill.
Tommy Tardie
Both Flatiron Room locations draw the attention of their visitors with ambiance, music, slick décor and an expansive selection of whiskey bottles (Tardie estimates to be between 600 and 700 at the Murray Hill location and about 1,000 at Nomad). The true draw of these establishments, however, lies elsewhere.
The Bottle Keep Program
The inspiration for what would become Tardie’s game-changing idea came from an unlikely place.
“When I was younger, I lived in Hawaii, and I used to go to Japan quite a bit with some of my Japanese buddies,” Tardie told Whiskey Raiders. “And I remember seeing they had something — I don’t know what they called it — but my takeaway was, we would go to Roppongi District and they would have bottles there waiting for them.”
This was different than the typical “bottle service,” where bar patrons can purchase bottles for their tables on any given night. These bottles were reserved for various individuals and could not be had by anyone else.
“I think it was [very much a] respect thing for senior management to give it to their employees, and I just thought it was cool,” Tardie said. “Back then, I was in advertising and never gave two thoughts about hospitality other than getting a burger or something. And for some reason, it stuck with me.”
So, once Tardie found himself opening The Flatiron Room, one of his first priorities was incorporating a bottle keep program, his logic being that it would build customer retention. After all, if you pay the premium price to have a bottle reserved for you at a bar, you’re going to be much more likely to return to that bar. Once you’ve purchased a bottle to come back to, that bottle is draped with a metal tag bearing your name. At this point, that bottle is yours and only yours.
Bottle keep lockers and bottles at Fine & Rare are pictured.
“For me, it’s the biggest compliment when someone purchases a bottle,” Tardie said. “I’m like, ‘OK. They like us enough that they’re committing to coming back in the future.”
The Flatiron Room opened with a bottle keep program, which since has completely run out of space. The Flatiron Room and its bottle keep were so successful that Tardie expanded, opening Fine & Rare in 2017. For the new location, Tardie upped the ante on the bottle keep program, installing lockers that customers who wanted a larger collection of bottles can pay for — complete with nameplates bearing the owners’ names.
“New York, like a lot of places, is all about your showmanship and the theater behind it,” Tardie said. “And people love it. They love coming in and being able to show their guests their locker and take out all of their bottles and put them on the table and have an evening with it, which is fantastic.”
Companies, not just individuals, reserve bottles and lockers. Major spirits conglomerates like Diageo, Campari, Edrington and William Grant & Sons have purchased lockers at Goodnight Group establishments. These companies will often reserve bottles for their employees, provide a list of who is allowed to drink from their lockers and even grant locker access to out-of-town visitors such as journalists writing a story about the company.
“They’ll call us and say, ‘Hey, listen, we have somebody from GQ coming in. We want them to try one of our bottles, so you can give them access to it,” Tardie said.
A metal tag for a Bottle Keep bottle is stamped.
The bottle keep and lockers became the calling card for the Goodnight Group’s bars. And after the world came crashing down for the hospitality industry with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the bottle keep program played a massive role in saving the day.
Like all bars and restaurants during the pandemic, Fine & Rare and The Flatiron Room shut down for a time. The momentum Tardie had built with his booming bars had been slammed to a halt.
When the locations reopened, Tardie wasn’t sure how much the steam they’d built would carry over. After all, COVID wasn’t gone. People were still nervous about the prospect of spending time in public, particularly indoors.
“The bottle keep was our catalyst,” Tardie said. “People had invested money, and they knew our brand. And they had a stake in it, even if it was a small stake. So, they came back and they had their bottles. So, I really thank my bottle keep for part of our current survival.”
Thanks in part to the bottle keep, The Flatiron Room managed to not only survive but thrive. The Flatiron Room has done so well, in fact, that Tardie has no plans to keep the brand secluded in New York.
The Future of The Flatiron Room
With plans already revealed for a new Flatiron Room location to open in Las Vegas, Tardie and Goodnight Group are eager to continue expanding their empire.
Tardie wants each Flatiron Room location to be distinctive, as opposed to what he called “cookie-cutter” or the Cracker Barrel model.
“We don’t want to be gimmicky, and we don’t want you to feel like, ‘Oh, wow, I feel like I’m back in New York,” Tardie said. “We have a very knowledge-based hospitality model. We really pride ourselves on staff education and making sure that the customer is receiving an experience that goes beyond just the liquor and food. And that’s where hospitality comes in.”
Tardie wants to design each Flatiron Room location keeping in mind local nuances, basing the decorations and structure on the architecture and landscape of each city, similar to what they’ve done with the New York locations, which have incorporated 200-year-old floorboards and Grand Central bank teller windows.
While the décor and feel may change from location to location, Tardie wants to retain the heart of The Flatiron Room at each new establishment.
“We think we provide something really unique and interesting and something that — regardless of your age or your preference in food and beverages — there’s something that you’re going to like at our place,” Tardie said. “It has that kind of supper club atmosphere. It’s upscale. It’s kind of unassuming luxury. We never want to be pretentious or come across in a way that’s going to feel like we’re superior.”
Retaining the essence of The Flatiron Room while designing each new establishment around its location will be a challenge — but one Tardie is up for.
“I think the thing that I like most about hospitality is building and creating a new space and making it profitable and using the systems that we have,” Tardie said. “I love it. I told you I was a creative director on Madison Avenue. I still like creating and making things, and I like seeing them come to life.”
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