Our Story
Two Bartenders, One Big Dream, and a Plan That Grew Wilder than They Ever Expected It To
Matt and Marco started slinging drinks behind this bar. Twenty-five years later, they own the building and a second bar upstairs.
It Started With a Sublease and a Lot of Nerve
In the early 2000s, Matt had come to Prescott from Vermont to study at Embry-Riddle and become a commercial pilot. Marco was a seventh-generation Prescottonian who’d cycled through architecture and interior design at Yavapai College without landing on an answer.
Neither one of them planned on this. But when you’re born entrepreneurs, life tends to notice before you do.
Doc Holiday’s, 2002
They convinced the previous owners of Matt’s to let them lease the upstairs, gutted it, rebuilt it themselves, and opened Doc Holiday’s in May of 2002. Matt was 22 years old. Marco was 24. Neither of them had run a business before.
A few months later, an opportunity came up to buy Matt’s Saloon, the bar downstairs, the one where they’d both been slinging drinks. So they bought it. Two guys barely out of their early twenties now owned two bars on Whiskey Row.
A Honky Tonk & A Piano Bar?
The space that was once Doc Holiday’s was converted to storage for many years until these two owners were ready for yet another massive undertaking, developing Prescott’s first dueling piano bar. Ironically, this was the original dream before they got the opportunity to purchase Matt’s. Now this duo owns two of the most iconic bars on Whiskey Row; Matt’s Saloon and Whiskey & Ivory.
Why Matt’s Still Feels Like Matt’s
Plenty of people would have bought a bar this old and “modernized” it. Stripped the walls, put in some Edison bulbs, printed a cocktail menu with a serif font and a manifesto on the back.
Matt and Marco didn’t, because they’ve stood on both sides of this bar. They know exactly what it’s worth to walk into a room where somebody knows your drink. The photographs stay on the walls. The floor stays oak. The band stays in the balcony. Matt’s is for everybody, and it’s going to stay that way.
