The Well — Hospitality Intelligence from Pourcast

Data-backed reporting on Texas beverage revenue, menu trends, and hospitality market shifts. Audited receipts, verified sources.

  • Rosa's Cafe Now Outsells Taco Cabana on Alcohol, With Half the Stores 2026-10-01 Rosa's Cafe out-sold Taco Cabana on reported Texas alcohol revenue over the last year with half the stores. Brand-by-brand numbers, Taco Tuesday pricing and the Grand Prairie opening.
  • Little Woodrow's Had a World Cup Summer. August Gave Some of It Back. 2026-10-01 Texas beverage tax receipts for all 25 Little Woodrow's, store by store: the summer jump, the EaDo outlier, the months around it, and how BoomerJack's, Walk-On's and Pluckers compare.
  • Every Darden Segment Grew. Its Three Biggest Texas Brands Poured Less. 2026-09-29 Same-location reported beverage revenue fell at Chuy's, Cheddar's and Olive Garden during Darden's first quarter. Yard House was the only Darden brand whose Texas bar grew.
  • Dave & Buster's posted a loss. Its Texas bars posted a tenth straight month of growth while the neighbors fell 16%. 2026-09-15 Dave & Buster's missed on revenue and earnings and fell 13% after hours. Texas beverage tax receipts at its 13 comparable venues rose 3.8% in July, a tenth straight month, while the rest of the Texas eatertainment index fell 15.9%.
  • ARB raised $325M to grow at home. Texas receipts show what leaving looked like. 2026-09-14 Mambo Seafood's three San Antonio permits stopped filing by April 2026, five months before parent ARB announced $325M for growth "within home markets." The receipts and the permit roster show what leaving looked like.
  • Red Robin Sold 116 Stores and Kept Texas. The Texas Bar Is Half What It Was. 2026-09-08 Red Robin's $96 million refranchising covered eleven states and skipped Texas. In the state it kept, per-store beverage tax receipts have halved since 2017.
  • Pappasito's Is Fine. Its Original Store Wasn't. 2026-09-07 Pappas is closing the original Pappasito's on Richmond Avenue. The Texas tax receipts show a chain back near its 2019 bar receipts, and one store that fell 42 percent behind it.
  • The Hooters founders are making a movie about the company they built. Here is what they bought back in Texas. 2026-09-05 Hooters' founders are making a movie about the company they built. Here is what they bought back in Texas, in reported beverage revenue.
  • Wing Costs Fell by Half. Buffalo Wild Wings' Texas Bars Sold Less Beer Anyway. 2026-09-04 Texas beverage tax receipts at 94 Buffalo Wild Wings sports bars were negative in 21 of 22 months while wholesale wing costs fell by half. Then the World Cup arrived.
  • Dine Brands Rebuilt Fuzzy’s Houston Around the Bar. The Bar Did Worse Than the Beer Joint. 2026-09-02 The last three Fuzzy’s Taco Shop locations in Houston closed on August 30. All three were bar-forward relaunch units. In 2026 not one of them filed as much alcohol revenue as the fast-casual box Dine let close in 2024 did in any year of its life.
  • 67 of 68 First Watch Locations in Texas Sold Less Alcohol This Year 2026-08-26 First Watch trimmed full-year EBITDA guidance because guests ordered more steak than the model expected. Texas tax filings show the other half of that mix story: same-store alcohol receipts down 14.8% in January through July, with 67 of 68 comparable locations declining, the third consecutive decline for that window.
  • Birria Was Already Here 2026-08-23 A Texas restaurant listed birria at $6.39 in 2007 and called it Jalisco style baby goat soup. Today it appears at 766 Texas venues, roughly one menu in thirteen, at 7.7 percent of our venue base against a 3.7 percent national menu rate. Search interest peaked three years ago. Menu penetration is still climbing, the 17 percent taco premium holds, and everywhere the dish traveled the pricing power did not follow.
  • Best Taco Chain of 2026, in Month Twenty-Five of the Decline 2026-08-23 On August 20, Reviewed named Torchy’s Tacos the best taco chain in the country. In that same month, trailing-twelve-month reported beverage revenue across its Texas system came to $240,664 per selling location, down for twenty-five consecutive months and 34.9% below the February 2023 peak. The Texas market grew 1.5% over the same window.
  • The Margarita That Saved Taco Cabana Also Shrank It: Forty-Eight Years of Tex-Mex, One $2 Decision 2026-08-22 Taco Cabana opened in a dead Dairy Queen in 1978, won a Supreme Court trade-dress case in 1992, and has been sold three times since 2000. Today its food prices with the fast-casual pack and its margarita sits at the 4th percentile of Texas prices. The $2 drive-thru margarita of April 2020 made the chain 4.2% of every reported beverage dollar in the state, and the reported alcohol line has never recovered, down 85% from 2019 while 33 liquor permits went dark in twelve months.
  • The Statute Nobody Used 2026-08-18 At 12:01 a.m. Eastern on August 19, a 50% duty lands on Canadian whisky with no trade-agreement exemption behind it. Crown Royal is fully in scope. On verified Texas menus it pours at a median $7.75, and the number that matters next is how long the distributor lag holds.
  • Salad and Go’s Texas Leases Just Sold for $3.57 Each 2026-08-18 Dutch Bros agreed to pay $2.06 million a door for Salad and Go’s open Arizona and Nevada leases and $50 for the entire closed Texas and Oklahoma bundle. Read against verified Texas menu prices, a commissary built for 500 stores, and the lettuce tape, the Texas number is the honest one.
  • Dave & Buster’s hired an airport bar veteran as COO. Texas receipts say the bar isn’t the problem. 2026-08-18 Dave & Buster’s named Amanda Busby Chief Operations Officer in August, the same month its CFO became its CEO, ending a seven-month stretch without anyone in the operations seat. Her resume is bars and kitchens: 19 years at Red Robin, then a $1.1 billion airport food and beverage operation at SSP America. The Texas tax filings say she’s arriving at a company whose bar is already working. Same-store beverage receipts at the chain’s 13 comparable Texas venues have now grown nine straight months.
  • The Two Prices of Jameson 2026-08-14 Jameson sits on Texas happy hour boards at $4.50 to $5.50 and on standard lists at a median $8, with the Midleton ladder climbing to $50 a pour. The specials tier recruits; the standard list carries the margin.
  • Chili's Runs the Biggest Bar in Texas. Its Guests Are Drinking Less. 2026-08-13 Chili's booked $99.8M in reported Texas beverage revenue in fiscal 2026, more than any casual dining chain in the state. In the fourth quarter that line grew 0.9% against 4.3% menu pricing: guests kept the visit and skipped the second drink.
  • Everyone wrote Topgolf off. Texas bar tabs say otherwise. 2026-08-10 Topgolf lost roughly half its valuation, cut hundreds of jobs and went private in January. Then its 13 comparable Texas venues grew alcohol receipts 11.0%, every single one of them, while six of nine competitor brands shrank.
  • The Dollarita worked. It didn't matter. 2026-07-10 Applebee's 2023 Dollarita produced the biggest October spirits month in nineteen years of Texas filings. Then the bill came due. Meanwhile Chili's, running $6 margaritas and monthly new recipes, passed Applebee's for good.
  • The Salad Company Just Bought a Bar Business That Wasn't Supposed to Exist 2026-07-02 Hopdoddy runs real bars at the entrance of every restaurant. The Texas tax receipts show four straight years of same-store growth through the hardest stretch the American drinking occasion has faced in a generation, plus a 12.6-point mix migration toward margaritas.
  • The Iced Tea Acquisition 2026-06-30 Local Favorite Restaurants paid for more than 40 dining rooms and a chicken-fried-steak audience. The tax receipts say so plainly: Cotton Patch is 36.7% of the new group's locations and 4.8% of its beverage revenue.
  • The bar M Crowd actually bought 2026-06-29 M Crowd paid $18.8M for bankrupt Razzoo’s and named the bar as the first fix. The Texas beverage tax receipts show why Mi Cocina’s parent did it.
  • The menu overhaul that announced a decline 2026-06-13 Pappas closed every company-owned On The Border on June 12, six weeks after announcing a turnaround. The Texas beverage tax receipts had already settled the question.
  • The Bar Tape Behind the Ojos Locos CEO Hire 2026-06-12 Ojos Locos unveiled Joe Hummel as CEO this week. The Texas tax filings tell a sharper story: mature stores poured 22% less this March than a year ago, even as per-unit revenue still leads Twin Peaks by 23%. The World Cup arrives three days later in the brand's two biggest markets.
  • The Bar Tab Doesn't Lie: What 19 Years of Alcohol Receipts Reveal About P.F. Chang's $8.99 Bet 2026-06-02 P.F. Chang's per-venue Texas alcohol revenue has fallen 59% from its 2007 peak. The September 2025 $8.99 Cocktail Collection relaunch produced no detectable signal in its first season, neither a turnaround nor further decline. Across 26 locations and 4,695 monthly filings, the durable story is a 19-year mix shift from wine to liquor.
  • Brian Lebredo has 700 Partners, and they're all executing 2026-05-18 Brian Lebredo has been at Texas Roadhouse for 26 years. He started hourly. Today he oversees the beverage program across all three Texas Roadhouse concepts, and by his own description, he works for 700 partners. The state tax filings add detail the annual report doesn't break out.
  • The chart KSL didn't see before they bought Invited Clubs 2026-05-11 KSL Capital Partners agreed to buy Invited Clubs from Apollo for ~$2.6B at roughly 8x EBITDA. Press coverage stopped at the multiple. Texas's monthly beverage receipts, one of the only public datasets that show private-club bar revenue at the venue level, tells a two-stage story: a three-year crater right after the take-private, then a Sunbelt-led recovery that ranks Apollo first over four years and dead last over nine. Both reads are honest. KSL is paying the bull case.
  • The Suburbs Are Winning 2026-05-07 In 2018, JINYA founder Tomo Takahashi told Restaurant Development + Design that the brand's next chapter was suburban. Seven years of Texas beverage tax receipts let us check that hypothesis. The answer is unambiguous. JINYA's Texas suburbs are out-billing its urban cores, and the gap is widening by multiples, not margins.
  • Red Robin's New CFO Ran a Bar-Led Recovery. Texas Says He Just Inherited the Opposite. 2026-05-05 Red Robin named Mark Graff CFO effective May 4, the third Bloomin' Brands alum in the senior chair rotation in 18 months. Graff just spent two years running Bonefish Grill, where Martini Mondays and Bang Wednesdays drove the brand's first positive traffic comp since Q1 2022. The Texas data on what he's walking into: per-venue beverage receipts down 42% since 2017, beer down 36%, wine down 56%, and an 89-venue competitor set in the same ZIPs running 5.6× Red Robin's median.
  • Brinker Said Maggiano's Reversed a Ten-Year Alcohol Decline. The Texas Receipts Say the Cocktails Worked and the Wine Program Didn't. 2026-05-04 Maggiano's launched the Mixologist Collection in July 2024 and Kevin Hochman told the market it had reversed a ten-year alcohol decline. The Texas tax receipts agree on the cocktails, liquor receipts up 17% and still positive. They disagree on the wine program. By March 2026, TTM beverage receipts had rolled back to -0.7% YoY and 8 of 9 Texas Maggiano's posted negative beverage prints in Q3 FY26.
  • Topgolf Is Peeling Away From the Pack 2026-04-23 Twelve of fifteen mature Texas Topgolf venues are positive on TTM same-store receipts. Every other major eatertainment brand in the state is flat or negative. The category aggregate is down 2.3%, and TopGolf, up 13.5%, is the only thing keeping it from collapse.
  • The Man Who Invented Bombshells Is Now Trying to Sell It 2026-04-22 Travis Reese built Bombshells in 2013 for RCI Hospitality Holdings. Twelve years, a peak, a pandemic surge, a 46% per-unit collapse, and a 79-count federal indictment of his former CEO later, he is back as Interim CEO, tasked with selling what remains of the chain to private equity at a valuation the tax receipts make harder to justify with every cycle.
  • Ten Years on Belt Line Road 2026-04-21 Lazy Dog's Addison store has been filing beverage receipts longer than any other location in Texas, and now ranks last. Trailing twelve-month revenue at $817,752, down 13.3% YoY, with three consecutive years of decline. The DFW legacy stores are softening while Houston's newer footprint carries the portfolio. A unit-level look at how casual dining brands age in markets where they were once novel.
  • 801 Chophouse Filed Chapter 11. The Texas Data Says It Won't Be the Last. 2026-04-18 801 Restaurant Group's April 10 Chapter 11 filing reads like a one-off, a family-owned, dinner-only chain that bet too aggressively on big-box urban real estate. Texas beverage receipts on the segment 801 walked away from suggests it's not. Eight of nine major upscale steakhouse brands posted negative TTM alcohol receipts through February 2026. The median was −7.3%. The cause sits in two ledgers: a 73-year cattle herd low compressing food cost, and a fine-dining check that no longer absorbs the pass-through.
  • Chuy's Has More Texas Locations Than Mi Cocina and Pappasito's Combined. It Still Lost the Per-Venue Race to Both. 2026-04-16 Darden acquired Chuy's for $605M and folded it into an opaque reporting segment. Texas beverage tax data reveals that every major scratch-kitchen Tex-Mex competitor in the state out-earns Chuy's per location, by margins ranging from 27% to 112%.
  • Postino at 25: The Texas Data 2026-04-08 We pulled 267 monthly Texas beverage tax filings with the state, covering all 12 Postino locations in Texas and $26.0 million in lifetime on-premise alcohol receipts. The filings say that 65.3% of Postino's Texas on-premise alcohol revenue comes from wine. The Texas industry average is roughly 13%. Postino is selling wine at five times the rate of the category it competes in.
  • The Brand-Level Split: What 21,500 Monthly Filings Reveal About Dave & Buster's and Main Event 2026-04-06 Dave & Buster's Entertainment reports both chains as a single operating segment. Texas beverage tax filings separate them. We pulled the complete filing history for 213 eatertainment venues across 13 brands, 21,500 monthly data points, to build the first independent, brand-level performance analysis of the D&B/Main Event platform.
  • Wine Revenue Per Location Has Been Cut in Half at America's Biggest Italian Restaurant Chain 2026-04-04 In the brand description section of Darden Restaurants' most recent 10-K, between the entree price ranges and the children's menu description, is a single data point: alcoholic beverages accounted for 4.7 percent of Olive Garden's sales in fiscal 2025. The prior year, it was 5.0 percent. The year before that, higher still.
  • First Watch Just Fired Its COO. Our Data Shows Why That's a Gamble. 2026-04-01 First Watch eliminated its COO role the same week it reported record expansion. Across 74 Texas locations and 4,309 monthly beverage tax filings, the data reveals a 3x location-level revenue spread, a beverage mix that contradicts the brand's own marketing, and a 4x AUV gap with every major breakfast competitor.
  • The Beer Test: What $10.6 Million in Texas Alcohol Receipts Reveal About the Brand Dine Brands Misread 2026-03-30 Fuzzy's Taco Shop generated $10.6 million in trailing-twelve-month alcohol revenue across 57 active Texas locations, a 14.2% decline from the prior year. But the real story is in the beer mix: 31.1% of revenue comes from beer, against 4.5% at Torchy's. That number changes the competitive map entirely.
  • Perry's Steakhouse: $91 Million in Beverage Sales, $7 Million Recovered, and the Math That Doesn't Add Up 2026-03-29 A federal court awarded $21.3 million to 707 Perry's servers for an illegal tip pool. But when you cross-reference the damages against 19 years of Texas beverage tax receipts and SEC filings from every publicly traded steakhouse, the $7 million in misappropriated tips covers barely half of what was actually diverted.
  • The Bar Tab Doesn’t Lie: What 13,000 Alcohol Receipts Reveal About Red Lobster’s Two-Speed Turnaround 2026-03-27 Bloomberg reported sales 20% below pre-bankruptcy levels. We used 13,217 monthly alcohol receipts across 70 Texas locations to examine what the turnaround looks like at the unit level.
  • The Wine Steakhouse: How Saltgrass Hides Fine-Dining DNA in a Casual Body 2026-03-25 Saltgrass Steak House runs a 19% wine share, closer to fine dining than casual steakhouse. The explanation: Landry's VP of Wine came from Morton's, and the centralized beverage program serves Caymus and Jordan alongside $7.50 house pours. Only beverage tax data reveals this hidden strategy.
  • Applebee's Is Still Huge in Texas: But the Trend Is Down 2026-03-23 Applebee's remains America's largest bar-and-grill by unit count, but its Texas footprint tells the contraction story: ~87 active locations, alcohol mix eroding from 14–15% to 10–12%, and Chili's AUVs now roughly 60% higher. The brand that invented the Dollarita is investing in dirty sodas.
  • Beer Gave Way to Cocktails. Now Beer Is Fighting Back. Inside Texas Roadhouse's 19-Year Beverage Shift. 2026-03-21 We analyzed 84 Texas Roadhouse locations across 19 years of beverage tax filings. COVID permanently flipped the beer-to-liquor ratio. Midland runs 56% beer while Houston runs 56% liquor. And the CEO's first store, Store #26, still pours $100K/month.
  • 98 BWW Locations, One State, a 7.3x Revenue Spread: Why Buffalo Wild Wings' Best Texas Markets Aren't Where You'd Expect 2026-03-18 Odessa's BWW does $132K/month in alcohol sales with a 3.1-star Google rating. Houston's 9 locations average $34K. We pulled beverage tax data on all 98 active Texas locations and found the biggest predictor of chain performance isn't operations, it's market structure.
  • Damn Good Numbers: What 18 Months of Alcohol Revenue Data Reveal About Torchy's Tacos 2026-03-18 We analyzed 82 Torchy's Tacos locations across 18 months of Texas beverage tax receipts. Tyler, TX outperforms Austin 3-to-1. Beer is just 5% of bar revenue. And Velvet Taco is posting higher per-unit sales with half the locations.
  • 218 Chili's Locations, One State, a 10x Revenue Spread: What Texas Tax Filings Reveal About Casual Dining's Biggest Winner 2026-03-17 Brownsville's Chili's does $93K/month in alcohol revenue: 3.3x the Houston average. We pulled beverage tax filings for all 218 active Texas locations and found the variance within America's hottest casual dining chain is enormous.
  • ZIP-Code Targeting: How to Make Every Advertising Dollar Count 2026-03-12 A citywide ad campaign wastes 95% of its budget reaching people outside your trade area. Using Texas beverage tax receipts and geo-targeting best practices, we show operators how to focus every dollar on the ZIPs that actually drive foot traffic.
  • Still Wine as a Cocktail Ingredient: Lower ABV, Lower Pour Cost, Zero Waste 2026-03-01 The global low-ABV cocktail market hit $4.2B in 2024 (8.7% CAGR). 67% of drinkers express interest in wine cocktails. Still wines (white, rosé, red, orange) are emerging as the most cost-efficient modifiers in the bartender's toolkit, delivering complexity at one-third the ingredient cost of spirits.
  • Camera-First Cocktails: The Natural Spectacle Ingredients Turning Drinks Into Content 2026-02-20 Matcha ($164M U.S. market, 8.5% CAGR), butterfly pea flower (now FDA-approved for alcoholic beverages), and forest pine (Torani's 2026 Flavor of the Year) are turning cocktail menus into visual media. Here's the operator math behind camera-first drink design.
  • Twin Peaks Filed for Bankruptcy. The Texas Data Says the Brand Isn't Broken. 2026-02-16 Twin Peaks' parent company filed Chapter 11. The headlines say crisis. The Texas tax receipts say $203K per location per month: 4x Buffalo Wild Wings and Hooters. This is a balance sheet problem, not a brand problem.
  • The Rise of Tiny Pours: Why Bars Earn More Per Ounce on Smaller Drinks 2026-02-05 Half-sized cocktails, tasting flights, and cocktail omakase are surging: driven by moderation culture, Gen Z variety-seeking, and a simple economic truth: bars earn more revenue per ounce on tiny pours than full-sized drinks.
  • Texas's Post-Storm Spending Surge, Explained 2026-01-27 Winter Storm Enzo shut down much of Texas in late January 2026, echoing the disruption of Winter Storm Uri five years prior. Yet the 2021 hospitality downturn proved surprisingly short-lived, followed by a surge that exceeded pre-storm levels. Here's what the data reveals about early-year revenue dynamics and why February often marked the inflection point.
  • The Verification Gap: Why Hospitality Can't Check Its Own Homework 2026-01-27 Hospitality is one of the only major industries where individual performance claims are effectively unverifiable. Public filing data suggests the gap between resumes and reality is wider than most operators assume.
  • Q4 2025: Casual Dining's Value Wars Heat Up 2026-01-24 The casual dining segment saw fierce competition in Q4 2025 as chains doubled down on value messaging. Our Texas beverage tax data reveals a clear winner, and lessons for every operator competing for price-conscious guests.
  • The Commuters Shaping Dallas Happy Hour 2026-01-22 Return-to-office mandates are transforming when and where Dallas professionals drink. Our ZIP-code-level analysis reveals which neighborhoods are winning the happy hour battle, and how smart operators are adjusting.
  • Pop, Foam, Smoke: How Textural Cocktails Are Rewriting the Bar P&L 2026-01-15 From bursting pearls to flavored espumas to scented smoke bubbles, textural cocktails turn drinks into multi-sensory performances, and the economics are surprisingly operator-friendly. Popping boba costs cents per drink; the upcharge is $2-5.
  • Three Spirits You've Never Poured, and Why They're Closer to Your Menu Than You Think 2026-01-08 A Levantine anise spirit, a Balkan fruit brandy, and a Mexican agave cousin to mezcal; three heritage spirits are finding footholds on American bar menus. We break down the pour costs, cultural narratives, and Texas-specific signals for each.
  • October vs. March: When Austin Bars Actually Make Their Money 2025-12-22 Austin's on-premise alcohol revenue peaks in October, not March. ACL alone generates $535 million in economic impact, F1 adds another half-billion, and college football fills every weekend in between. SXSW ($381 million) is enormous, but it's a single week competing against October's four-weekend onslaught. We map the full seasonal cycle, from January's Dry Month trough to the triple-stacked fall, and show how Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio follow entirely different calendars.
  • Women Reshaping the Texas Beverage Industry: A Data Portrait 2025-12-10 Nearly half of U.S. restaurants are at least 50% women-owned, yet women-led firms average $1.7M in revenue versus $4.1M for men-led firms. From Alba Huerta's James Beard win to the 90% harassment rate, we examine the data behind women's rising, but uneven, power in Texas hospitality.
  • The Rise of Swavoury: How Umami Ingredients Are Rewriting the American Cocktail Playbook 2025-11-28 From MSG martinis to miso syrups to sesame fat-washed bourbon, savory-sweet ("swavoury") cocktails are the next evolution after "swicy." Here's the operator economics, Texas proof points, and the science of why umami works in a glass.
  • The End of "Asian-Inspired": Why Specificity Is the New Premium in American Bar Programs 2025-11-12 From pandan to sudachi to calamansi, the next wave of bar ingredients isn't "Asian-inspired", it's Filipino, Japanese, Levantine, and Oaxacan. Here's the sourcing data, Texas infrastructure, and menu engineering playbook for the specificity premium.
  • Soju's Breakout Moment: Why the World's Best-Selling Spirit Is Finally Landing on American Bar Menus 2025-10-25 South Korean soju exports to the U.S. hit $26.2M and 10.5M liters in 2024. With flavored variants driving acquisition, sub-$1 pour costs, and K-culture providing free consumer education, soju is crossing over from K-town to the mainstream cocktail menu.
  • The Carajillo Is Coming for the Espresso Martini, and Texas Is Ground Zero 2025-10-08 Yelp searches up 118%, Google Trends doubling, Licor 43 targeting 250K cases; the Carajillo is riding the Espresso Martini's wake with better margins and simpler execution. Here's what it means for Texas operators.
  • Zebra Striping: The Revenue Behavior Texas Bars Are Missing 2025-09-20 About 48% of on-premise consumers alternate alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks on a night out. For Texas operators, NA isn't cannibalizing alcohol, it's expanding check averages.