The West Hollywood Bar Employees Only Pours Its Last Drink Sept. 27

Managing partner Tom Sopit points to the city's wage and paid-leave rules, rising costs and bartenders leaving town.

The West Hollywood cocktail bar Employees Only will pour its last drink on Sunday, September 27, 2026. The room on Santa Monica Boulevard, just west of Fairfax Avenue, opened eight years ago. Managing partner Tom Sopit told Eater LA that the business and consumer climate made it hard to keep the doors open.

The bar had become a late stop for people who pour drinks for a living, and that crowd gets one more night: Employees Only is throwing an industry party on the 27th, Eater LA reported.

Sopit won't rank what did it. “It wasn't really one thing that killed us,” he told the outlet. “It was death by a thousand cuts.”

Under that heading he put West Hollywood's minimum wage increase, the city's paid-time-off requirement, the price of goods, inflation, vandals who damaged an air-conditioning unit last year, changing drinking habits and GLP-1 medications. The West Hollywood ordinance he's referring to sets a floor of 96 compensated hours a year for full-time workers, usable for sick time, vacation or personal necessity.

Then there's the staff he can't replace. A lot of professional bartenders in this town are actors, Sopit said, and they're leaving. “There are gigs in Vancouver, Jersey, and New York, but not here,” he told Eater LA. Auditions have moved online, he said, and the production trucks he grew up seeing around Los Angeles aren't around anymore.

Sopit has worked in hospitality since 2008. He's still deciding whether to stay in it.

The same weekend, Downtown's Rossoblu announced a November 1, 2026 closing date; chef Steve Samson and business partner Dina Samson told Eater LA they've sold the restaurant. Both sets of owners described the same conditions — a slowdown in dining, and labor, rent and ingredient costs going the other way.

They land in a year that's already taken Delicias Bakery and Some, Sky's Gourmet Tacos and Crustacean, per Eater LA. Toi on Sunset, the 40-year-old Hollywood restaurant, posted on Instagram that it's at risk of closing, citing a post-pandemic drop in late-night customers and Paycheck Protection Program loans coming due, and started a GoFundMe.

Last call at Employees Only is Sunday, September 27, at 7953 Santa Monica Boulevard.

Source: la.eater.com, retrieved September 16, 2026.