Austin Bar/Restaurant Owner on Undercover Boss

I first met Doug Guller about ten years ago as he was readying his first Bikini Sports Bar and Grill for opening at IH-35N. The concept is simple: girls in bikinis serving drinks and comfort food, and lots of sports on TV. Doug even coined the term “breastaurant.”

Since then the business has grown to several more locations and was recently featured on the national show Undercover Boss, the episode airing last week.

Guller got a lot of negative response and was lambasted on social media. Viewers objected to sequences where he offered to pay for a girl’s breast augmentation and fired another for refusing to wear a bikini top.

To be fair, Guller also was very generous to several of the employees, but those instances were overshadowed.

Guller said it was a positive experience, and he’ll make some changes. I like Doug, and I hope he does make those changes.

But I question the network for choosing Bikini’s in the first place. Normally they feature much larger companies with huge employee bases. One could argue that it would be difficult for Guller to successfully go undercover at his smallish chain. And the nature of that business lends itself to a number of possible sexual innuendos, many of which manifested themselves during the show.

As tempting as this may have been to Doug, I think both he and CBS should have passed on this one. Didn’t do a lot for national perceptions of Austin either.

Oh and like most American TV these days, Undercover Boss is based on a British show of the same name.