The hospitality industry is struggling. Every single part of owning a small bar or restaurant has gotten more expensive, at staggering rates. The median cost of opening a restaurant in 2018 could range from $175,500 to $750,500, and in 2025, the average cost could be as high as $2 million, according surveys cited in Food & Wine magazine.
Expenses aside, owning a bar or restaurant is a laborious and time-consuming endeavor that saps every aspect of your life. Sometimes, your labor of love can also be a drain on your family. So what happens when one of Reno’s most innovative business owners sees the writing on the wall and decides to close one business and redirect his creative energy toward something new?
T. Duncan Mitchell has been a part of the food and beverage landscape of Reno for decades. He started his career at legendary dive bar Mr. O’s, then opened the award-winning bars Chapel Tavern and 40 Mile Saloon. He sold those bars and, in 2019, opened the ambitious German restaurant Von Bismarck, which continued to grow his reputation for quality and taste. Von Bismarck has been home to inspired German dishes, a rotating list of curated German beers and wines, and a cocktail menu inspired by Germany but rooted in Reno. But the world of 2019 was a significantly different one from today. Now those German ingredients are expensive or impossible to find, and the cost of staffing a restaurant is higher than it has ever been.
“It was the Indiana Jones trap,” Mitchell said. “The walls just kept closing in slowly. Costs just keep incrementally going up; labor keeps incrementally going up; and it’s harder to source things. I can’t even get the really cool, direct-from-Germany beers anymore.”
The Von Bismarck team is no stranger to hard work and a changing landscape. They’ve been through COVID-19 closures and pivots, and as a restaurant with mostly outdoor seating, they adapted to the Northern Nevada weather. (Outdoor heaters and lap blankets made the patio cozy and comfortable.) But in light of continued cost hikes and the recent product-availability issues, Mitchell started thinking differently.
“I thought of a ton of ways to adapt, like, maybe we need to just pivot, right?” he said. “I thought, what if we scrap the whole concept and could do something completely new? But what if that doesn’t work, right? Like, what if that does not fix the problems? I would have to sacrifice so much personally that it just came to where it just wasn’t worth it anymore.”
With a building that features two massive patios, wood-fired grills and a smaller dining room, the options for changing the concept were not tenable to Mitchell.
“The squeeze is on full-service sit-down restaurants—and if something doesn’t change, they’re going to keep disappearing,” Mitchell said. “It just is too hard. There’s not enough margin to make it worthwhile for most people.”
He announced in early October that the restaurant would close, with Oct. 26 its last day in business.
“I was always a bar guy,” he said. “I was always a bartender, and that’s what I’ve done, and that’s what I know. I’ve been looking for a long time to get back into bars.”
Two years ago, an opportunity came across Mitchell’s desk. Leigh and Ian Stafford, the owners of Ryan’s Saloon and Broiler since 2018, were looking to sell. After two years of back and forth, Mitchell purchased Ryan’s, and with the closure of Von Bismarck, he will be able to focus his energy and talent on the longstanding Irish bar, which opened in 1974.
“It’s going to remain Ryan’s Saloon,” Mitchell said. “I will inject my influence while keeping and respecting as much of the history as possible.”
Over the decades, Ryan’s has become more famous for its burgers than its Irish heritage, falling closer to the category of dive bar than Irish bar.
“I want to bring back that Irish-pub feel to it,” Mitchell told me. “I think it’s something that the community needs.”
The drinks will get an update, with a focus on Irish coffees and classics. The kitchen will also get an update. “The menu’s going to be super simple, quick-serve, but definitely with more of an Irish and British feel,” he said.
I have always said that the people who make the best drinks are those who are the best editors—those who trust their vision enough to know that it can change, and where you started, more often than not, is not where you end up. As hard as it will be to say goodbye to Von Bismarck, I know that as long as Duncan is creating things in Reno, where he will end up will be much better than where he began.