High on the Hogs: Iconic saloon pops back up in downtown Las Vegas
It’s 2½ days before Hogs & Heifers Outpost opens inside the Plaza. Michelle Sandler, the tavern’s chief operating officer, is holding a meeting. Whether it’s planned or impromptu is hard to say.
A group of casually attired employees mills around the bar. They pay attention as Sandler, kneeling on a bar stool, calls out instructions. Her directives are inaudible from a distance, aside from a half-dozen F-bombs, dropped for emphasis.
The group nods, then disperses. Sandler has been running hard, working every day since Dec. 26. And the workdays run 16 hours, she mentions, not as a complaint but as a point of fact.
She’s asked if all this effort to open a pop-up bar for half a year is worth it. She looks at the group, smiles and says, “What’s really worth it to me is that I can get all these people back to work and open up an outpost that brings our community back together.”
H&H owner Michelle Dell, who would arrive minutes later after a meeting with building inspectors, is asked what has been her big revelation since the closing of the original saloon was announced last spring. “The biggest revelation for me was hiring Michelle Sandler as my COO,” says Dell, who hired Sandler four years ago. “It was the best decision I have made in my entire career.”
Hogs & Heifers is opening its pop-up Wednesday night, a simple, ceremony-free restart. The club will run for six months, or maybe eight, maybe longer, as work is completed on its new site across Main Street. The plan is to move from the Plaza to the new place seamlessly, and for the new H&H to operate indefinitely.
Moving quickly
The biker-themed club shut down its Third Street and Ogden Avenue location on July 5 after 20 years. Its lease with owner CIM Group had finally expired. The team had no home, and only a plan to keep the business alive. Dell then bought the parcel at 307 and 319 S. Main St., across from the Plaza.
After talk of an on-site Fort Hogs pop-up bar on that property, Dell and Plaza CEO Jonathan Jossel worked a deal for the H&H Outpost. The opening was created as the Sand Dollar Downtown planned to close at the hotel in the middle of last month (the original Sand Dollar Lounge on Polaris and Spring Mountain continues to flourish).
Development of the pop-up club and the new site has been executed with impressive efficiency. Dell and Sandler worked fast to keep H&H from being dormant longer than six months.
“We closed on our property on Oct. 3 or Oct. 4, and we were in front of the planning commission for our zoning entitlements by Nov. 18, and then in front of City Council by Dec. 17,” Dell says. “That’s pretty unheard of. Zoning entitlements can take months and months, but Sandler is so proactive. We had all the paperwork. She had every single thing we could possibly need ready to go into the city.”
The club auditioned more than 30 prospective bartenders, from a list of 100 applicants, hiring a dozen through that process. The servers take on a role of shouting at customers and taking orders to the bar and dancing to music played from a vintage jukebox hauled over from the old place.
Dell says more than half of the staff from the original H&H is working at the new club. “Some people moved on. Some people moved entirely. Some people didn’t reapply, and a few that reapplied, we didn’t bring back,” Dell says. The original H&H employed a staff of 45.
‘Our own structure’
Dell and bar manager Madi Fisher head up the training for the servers, who are coached to be equal-opportunity abusers. If you were to walk in wearing a tie, for instance, expect to be called out. Possibly with a bullhorn. The bartenders dance on the bar tops, creating the first impression many guests have as they walk into Hogs & Heifers.
As before, H&H is a cash-only establishment. Hit the ATM before practicing commerce in this club.
The bar will be decorated with nostalgic pics of Hogs & Heifers’ past. There won’t be room for hanging a shark (Dell’s ex-husband was a shark fisherman). The stage installed at the Sand Dollar won’t be in play. A neon image of Hunter S. Thompson is off to the right of the club’s entrance. It’s being held over because nobody in the crew has been able to figure out how to pull it free.
Having worked this hard for this long, Dell takes a beat to reflect on the past several months.
“We’ve accomplished so much as a unit, as a team, the seven managers that that stayed with us have really been working throughout this entire time of downtime for this moment,” the owners says. “Hogs was never a company that had manuals for each department. We are recognizing a world where young people are brought into a world with a lot more structure. Well, my generation was the first where both parents went to work; we were the original latchkey kids.
“We have our own structure, and it works.”
John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on X, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.
