What Happened to Speakeasy Bar & Grill After Bar Rescue? (Kenner, LA)

Speakeasy Bar & Grill in Kenner, Louisiana was featured in the March 2017 episode "All Twerk and No Pay Makes Taffer Shut It Down," with the actual visit from Jon Taffer taking place the previous October. Owner Keith Bellaci had purchased the bar in 2006. The episode's title points to service and payroll problems the show identified at the location, part of a broader pattern of financial and operational issues that led Taffer to intervene. As part of the rescue, Taffer's team retrained staff, reworked the bar's offerings, and renamed the business from Speakeasy to The Second Line Co., a concept meant to lean into New Orleans-area brass-band and parade culture.

After the production left, the owners opted to change the name back to Speakeasy Bar & Grill rather than keep the Second Line Co. branding, according to Bar Rescue Updates' coverage of the bar. The reversion to the original name did not translate into lasting success. Bar Rescue Updates reported in January 2018 that Speakeasy Bar & Grill had closed at the end of 2017, roughly a year after the televised episode aired. A different business, Area 504 Bar & Grill, later moved into the same Williams Boulevard space, but that operation also closed after a relatively short run, as reported by the same fan site's follow-up coverage.

Yelp's current listing for the address, updated as of April 2026, continues to show the business marked closed, consistent with that history. No government or licensing record was located to independently confirm the exact closure date beyond the fan site's January 2018 report, so that date is treated as reported rather than fully verified. Because a second business also came and went at the same Kenner storefront after Speakeasy's closure, the address does not appear to have a single clear successor currently operating there as of the most recent check, and no evidence of current operation under any name was found at 4345 Williams Boulevard during this research pass.