Is The Wheel House Bar Still Open? Bar Rescue Update (Hemet, CA)

The Wheel House Bar in Hemet, California, appeared on "Bar Rescue" in the episode "Wheels of Misfortune," which examined a bar struggling with an unfocused identity, inconsistent drink and food offerings, and staff who needed retraining to keep up with a venue built around live entertainment. Jon Taffer's team rebuilt the drink and food menus around a simpler, cheaper bar-food concept, including sandwiches, flatbreads, and shareable snacks, paired it with a curated beer and cocktail list, and renamed the business Derby's Bar & Grill to signal the reset. The bar's own account of the makeover describes it being revamped in 36 hours before reopening under the new name on April 26, 2016, with new bartenders trained by a mixologist brought in for the relaunch.

Rather than positioning Derby's purely as a sports bar or a straightforward restaurant, the rebuild leaned into nightly entertainment, including comedy, karaoke, DJ nights, and live bands, as the bar's main draw, a format the business has kept in place ever since. A decade on, Derby's Bar & Grill continues to operate at the same Hemet address under the post-rescue name. Its Yelp listing, last updated in June 2026, showed 75 reviews and no closure notice, and the bar's own website, derbyshemet.com, lists current hours, a live entertainment calendar, and delivery partnerships with Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub.

That same website's current entertainment lineup includes a monthly jazz jam, weekly karaoke, and recurring stand-up comedy nights, extending the entertainment-forward format Taffer's team installed in 2016. Recent customer feedback compiled alongside the Yelp listing described the live-entertainment nights positively while noting occasional service strain on busier nights, a routine operational note rather than any sign of closure. Between the active Yelp presence and the functioning business website, Derby's Bar & Grill appears to remain a going concern under the name "Bar Rescue" gave it in 2016, with no sourced indication it has ever reverted to its original Wheel House name.