It will have been one year since Back Door Tavern reopened on March 4. On Saturday, the hole-in-the-wall bar celebrated its patrons for keeping the establishment open.
"The big event was a year ago, just over a year ago, when the owner decided to close the doors," Steve Polte, one of the people who helped put a business plan together to revive Back Door Tavern last year, said. "At that point there was a big uprising, and all the patrons were distraught, and we figured out a way to keep it open. So the original owner essentially owns the bar, we're just under new management."
Back Door Tavern's longtime owner Barry Cook said in 2017 he was going to retire and close the bar in February. However, Polte and many other customers of the bar came together to rally up a business plan and keep Back Door Tavern up and running.
Polte said during the "We're Still Here" Anniversary on Saturday that this business is managed differently than most others. It relies on the customers and patrons to keep Back Door up and going.
"Really, it's a patrons-run bar. This bar is not a typical business where there is an owner pulling money out of it. We're just keeping the bar going and the patrons have tremendous input," Polte said. "So the patrons run it. And the reason why they're so interested in keeping it open is because we have three or four generations of families that have visited this place, and they have stories to tell and they want their grandkids to continue coming to this place."
The business also made a bit of humor of the anniversary, looking back at other former bars in the Knoxville area that had ended up closing down. On one of its shirts, many former bars were crossed out except Back Door Tavern at the bottom, and off to the side it said, "We're still here."
The tavern sits on Kingston Pike in Bearden across the street from Chick-fil-A. It also said thank you to everyone who came out to the anniversary event on Saturday.