A Shawnee bar and grill is back open, and its owner is working to pay off an overdue tax bill following an eight-day shutdown by the state of Kansas.
The Social Bar & Grill, 13410 West 62nd Terr., and all its assets were seized by the Kansas Department of Revenue on Tuesday, Jan. 28.
At the time, a news release from the Department of Revenue said that the bar’s owner owed more than $50,000 in unpaid taxes.
Owner blames one late payment for ‘ruckus’
Owner Jordan Grove says he has hired a lawyer to help settle the issue and wants to get back to business as usual as quickly as possible.
Grove told the Post this week that he was already making payments toward a payment plan established with the Department of Revenue when his business was seized last month.
He said one payment of less than $200 was posted late, and that’s when agents from the state seized the property.
“I had a $180 payment post late, and that’s what caused all of this ruckus,” Grove told the Post in an interview on Wednesday afternoon. “Ultimately, I was doing my best and being really aggressive with my payment plan that was already in place with them.”
He said that when state revenue agents and Johnson County Sheriff’s deputies came in, he signed paperwork allowing agents to donate the perishable goods.
“They never did that,” Grove said. “I ended up having to throw away about $2,000 worth of product after the eight days that I was gone.”
The Post contacted the Kansas Department of Revenue for comment on this story on Tuesday morning and had not heard back at the time of publication.
A spokesperson for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office said deputies were at The Social only to assist state agents and deferred comment to the state Department of Revenue.
The bar reopened on Feb. 5
Grove said that his lawyer was able to get the ball rolling, and eventually, he was able to get the bar’s keys on Tuesday, Feb. 4.
He reopened the next day, Wednesday, Feb. 5.
A week later, he said business is slowly returning to normal, noting that Super Bowl Sunday was slower than he had hoped but still saw a good turnout.
“The two weeks between the [AFC] championship game and the Super Bowl were two of my busiest last year, so they kind of crushed me on what I was forecasting,” Grove said.
The closure cost the business one member of the kitchen staff, who Grove said got another job. The rest of his small, close-knit staff stayed on board through the uncertainty, he said.
Moving forward, Grove plans to get back to what worked for Garrett’s Bar and Grill, 6505 Nieman Road, the place he ran before he rebranded and relocated to the larger space that is now The Social Bar & Grill.
He has already rescheduled a band that he had to cancel during the forced shutdown and is looking into starting new events like a darts tournament, along with bands and specials to coincide with the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day holiday and the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament in March.
