Tony's Bar & Rooftop — Restaurant in Fort Collins

First lets compare Fort Collins to NYC because in NYC it is 5-6 times more expensive to lease business space for a Bar restaurant

Tonys charges $4 for a cheese slice

At “99 Cent Fresh Pizza” which is a business name of a place downtown NYC you can get a cheese slice for $1.

At Joes Pizza downtown NYC a slice of Cheese is $3.

There is no mystery to this. Its called price gouging. I was the Kitchen manager at Tonys for a few years. When i started the owners claimed someone was “stealing” $45,000 a year. Turns out, the missing money was tied to BAD ORDERING AND BOOK KEEPING IE INVENTORY which they never did. They used a long time food purveyor who had been jacking the costs of goods to the moon and never sought to switch companies. Because 30yrs prior the original owner had a bad experience with Sysco.

The prices could be better but they do the copycat thing that everyone in town does and price match other businesses instead of trying to gain a regular crowd that comes for the better food and cheaper prices. In 2018 after i switched them to US food the cost to make pizza was so much lower that even $2 was feasible for a price of cheese and left plenty of room for profit considering it was near $1 to make a whole pizza.

Like a basket of fries from the window is $8 and a side of fries at the Whiskey is $6. Again, in downtown NYC where lease rent is 5x as much has sides of fries for $5.

When i first took over as kitchen manager i asked the bar managers for both the Whiskey and Tonys how much they charged for sides of sauces like ranch which they would ring back by the dozens nightly. Neither side was charging for sides of sauce. Literally giving away profits. So free sauce but a $1.30 in cost basket of fries is $8? How does that make sense?

In my short time there not only did i vastly improve the menu by taking off high cost items that were being sold for less than the per plate cost of the item like calamari, which cost $14 a plate to buy but they sold it for $12 on the menu. But i also dramatically lowered the cost of things like the cost of goods to make the pizza by getting cheaper products that were better than the high price “buffalo milk mozzarella “ which wasnt even as good but cost 3x the price to buy.

What places like this and other places in town are not realizing is that VOLUME is whats important when making food sales, lower the profit margins per plate, and have people come back 7 days a week to keep buying food they actually like.

A great example was i took the calamari off the menu and was able to source YELLOW FIN TUNA for 1/3 the price and had sashimi tuna and a fresh Ahi Tuna salad on the menu, between both items i would sell a whole case of tuna on friday and a whole case on Saturday. Before that, 1 case of calamari would sit for weeks in the freezer that would go bad and eventually go in the trash. It was told to me by the Gm of the whiskey that they kept buying it for their customers yet we would sell 1 or 2 orders a night.

no place in this town has to charge as high of prices that they do if they ran the business trying to collect a regular crowd and used lower profit margins to do so. Even the bar managers werent doing bar inventory properly and had grouped up liquors that had all different prices.

I left that job after having a bad fall and was treated like absolute trash by Tavo the Gm of the whiskey at the time and his whole staff who all thought i made more money than them when i was barely making $26,000 after taxes. Most of them made double or more.

The pictures i provided are

-Fresh grilled Ahi Tuned salad with edamame, shredded carrots and Honey Lime Sriracha dressing -Easter Lamb preparation for the Church of with Tony and his family -Blueberry Breading pudding with Irish Creme whipped topping , walnut streusel and maple syrup

People came there for my food when i was Chef. Now its just another bar with over...

I am a regular at Tony's and have been a customer for almost 4 years, along with my husband. Recently as of 4/12/2024 my husband and I had a sad experience solely because of a bouncer working at Tony's, named Robert. This bouncer was working during 11:00pm with the other bouncer Carlos. Carlos is a phenomenal bouncer that always does his job with integrity and great customer service. The bouncer Robert has been quite discriminatory towards my husband and I on numerous occasions. We've been in lines before with Robert and he has never spent as much time with other customers checking their IDs as he has ours. My husband and I both have valid Colorado IDs, and are able to access all bars in Fort Collins with ease. He inspected my husband's ID for nearly 10-15 minutes on two occasions with no valid reason as to why his ID needed this amount of time compared to the seconds he takes to check other customer's IDs. He started instigating my husband about the height listed on his driver's license. We have never seen this bouncer inspect any other customer's ID information like this, nor any other bouncer do this to another customer. My husband and the other bouncer Carlos let Robert know that this should not be an issue. The DMV has verified my husband's identification information as valid, as it is posted on his ID, so this bouncer shouldn't be questioning my husband about the validity of information on his ID that the DMV has validated.... It's very odd because this bouncer never does this with any other customer, each time we are in line. It feels very discriminatory and makes us feel like we are being singled out and are unwelcome. This is bizarre because I have met the owner of Tony's, Tony himself l, and he is very friendly and creates a welcoming atmosphere for his clientele. But this bouncer Robert is hostile. We tried to address the the situation and he acted like he did not care and dismissed us, regardless of this feedback being shared with his boss Tony himself. Carlos was the only bouncer to hear us out and validate our experience. There are plenty of respectful bouncers working at Tony's, such as Carlos and Paul who are dedicated and create a safe environment for customers, that it is sad that this bouncer Robert doesn't care at all to put the same effort for Tony's cliente. We enjoy our time here at this bar but not when this bouncer creates unnecessary conflict with us, and sadly we do not think we can continue coming to this bar due to the discriminatory and biased environment that this bouncer creates for us. I am confident that a conversation from Carlos was had with this bouncer directly, as he planned, and I hope the owner Tony is able to address this bouncer directly too. I would hate if this bouncer were to tarnish the good reputation that the Tony's bar has for being a fun and enjoyable place. I hope this bouncer can prove to be more respectful and fair with Tony's cliente...

The service is horrible at this place. The bouncers are extremely rude and wait staff is VERY inattentive. I went there with a friend since it was right next to where we had dinner. We were sat at a 4 top table upstairs. Took forever to get drinks and then we sat for 30 minutes or more with no drinks waiting for a second round. Finally when server came to get second drink order, got a text from my bf saying he would meet us there. I informed the server he was coming and asked for a beer for him as well since I knew we likely wouldn’t see him again for another 30 min. When my bf arrived they refused to let him in, saying they were way over capacity (which is illegal) and couldn’t let him in. They then let in 6 other people. Tried to explain to bouncer that we were at a 4 top and only 2 of us sitting there. We had the space. He continued to scream at us and be extremely disrespectful. I get being at capacity, but it just shows how poorly run this place is and how they are doing a terrible job managing COVID regulations. Our waiter even came over to apologize to us and offer us a free round which we did not want at that point. He then came over and brought another beer for my bf who they didn’t let in? Beyond stupid. We went to Elliots after and had a wonderful time. Highly recommend Elliots or anywhere in Fort...