218 Chili's Locations, One State, a 10x Revenue Spread: What Texas Tax Filings Reveal About Casual Dining's Biggest Winner

The National Story vs. the Local Data

Brinker International's turnaround is the most-discussed success story in casual dining. FY2025 revenue hit $5.384 billion, up 22% year-over-year. Same-store sales have been positive for 19 consecutive quarters. The four-year comp stack sits at +62%. Average unit volume climbed from $3.1 million to $4.5 million while competitors filed bankruptcy around them.

Wall Street has covered this exhaustively. What hasn't been covered is what the location-level data looks like when you move past national averages.

Texas is the natural place to look. The state holds roughly 218 active Chili's locations: 18% of the domestic footprint and the chain's largest single-state concentration. More importantly, Texas is the only state where we can see actual government-filed alcohol revenue for every single location, broken out by liquor, beer, and wine, updated monthly.

We pulled the full dataset from Texas beverage tax filings. Here's what 218 active Chili's locations look like at the filing level.

Portfolio Snapshot: $7.9M in Monthly Alcohol Revenue, 31% Variance

The 218 active locations with non-zero filings generate approximately $7.9 million in combined monthly beverage revenue. The average is $35,730 per location. The median is $34,504, a gap consistent with slight rightward skew.

The variance tells the real story. The coefficient of variation across the portfolio is approximately 31%: significant for a chain with standardized menus, brand standards, and operating procedures. The top non-airport location (Brownsville) files $93,382 per month. The bottom active locations report under $12,000. Two locations filed $0 in the most recent period, and roughly 150 historical permits associated with Chili's are inactive, reflecting closures and relocations accumulated over decades.

For context, Chili's reports that alcohol represents 9.3% of systemwide company sales. Applied to the $4.5 million national AUV, that implies monthly alcohol revenue of roughly $34,875 per location, which aligns closely with the Texas median of $34,504. This gives us confidence that the Texas portfolio is broadly representative of the national chain, and that the outliers are genuinely location-driven.

The $200K Outlier: DFW Airport and Captive-Audience Economics

The highest-grossing Chili's in Texas by alcohol revenue is operated by Star Concessions at DFW International Airport. The top DFW Airport permit files over $201,873 per month: 5.6x the chain average. Multiple Chili's permits exist within the airport, with the top two each filing approximately $200K. Combined, the DFW Airport Chili's presence generates over $400,000 per month in alcohol revenue alone.

DFW processed a record 87.8 million passengers in 2024, ranking as the third-busiest airport globally. Star Concessions operates 70+ airport and travel retail locations. At Dallas Love Field, their concepts generate upwards of $90,000 per week. A new 5,434-square-foot Chili's in DFW Terminal D has been filed for construction.

Airport locations operate in a fundamentally different economic universe. Revenue per square foot can reach $7,700 versus $150–$250 for a typical street-side restaurant. Travelers drink earlier in the day, drink more per occasion, and have limited alternatives during layovers. Research shows 39% of travelers who drink admit to drinking earlier than usual at airports.

For benchmarking purposes, the DFW Airport locations should be analyzed separately from street-side units. They represent captive-audience economics, not local market dynamics.

The RGV Anomaly: Why Border-Town Texas Beats Big-City Houston by 3.3x

Strip out the airport and the most striking pattern in the dataset is the Rio Grande Valley's dominance. Nine Chili's locations spanning Hidalgo and Cameron counties average $58,887 per month: 65% above the statewide chain average.

The verified top RGV performers:

• Brownsville (Cameron Co.): $93,382, the undisputed #1 non-airport Chili's in Texas
• Weslaco (Hidalgo Co.): $71,134
• Edinburg (Hidalgo Co.): $67,004
• Harlingen (Cameron Co.): $61,589
• Mission (Hidalgo Co.): $54,661
• McAllen (Hidalgo Co.): $53,829
• San Juan (Hidalgo Co.): $50,166
• Mercedes (Hidalgo Co.): $40,014
• McAllen 2nd location (Hidalgo Co.): $38,203

Meanwhile, Houston's 14 Chili's locations average just $27,829. Brownsville alone does 3.3x what the average Houston location does.

The drivers are structural, not operational. First, competitive density: the RGV has a fraction of the casual dining options available in major metros. In Brownsville or Weslaco, full-bar casual dining options are essentially Chili's, an Applebee's, and an Olive Garden. Chili's functions as the de facto social hub: the place for birthday dinners, post-church lunches, and Friday night drinks.

Second, demographics concentrate demand. The RGV is over 90% Hispanic with a median age of 30.3 and average family size of 3.94. Research consistently shows Hispanic consumers spend a larger share of expenditures on dining out (per Mintel's 2025 Hispanic Consumer Restaurant report), and the cultural emphasis on communal family meals drives larger party sizes and higher per-visit alcohol spend. The cultural alignment between Chili's Southwest-forward, margarita-heavy positioning and its RGV customer base creates almost frictionless demand.

Third, two additional demand layers amplify revenue. Cross-border spending from Mexican nationals totaled $4.9 billion in the McAllen area in 2023, per the Dallas Federal Reserve. Approximately 100,000 Winter Texans, seasonal retirees from the Midwest and Canada, migrate to the RGV from October through April, concentrating high-disposable-income diners in a market with minimal competition.

One emerging headwind worth monitoring: Black Box Intelligence data from late 2024–2025 showed traffic softening in Hispanic-heavy ZIP codes, potentially tied to immigration enforcement anxieties.

County-Level Benchmarking: Where the Chain Over- and Under-Indexes

Breaking the 218 active locations into geographic clusters reveals clear performance tiers.

The top tier is the RGV: 9 locations across Hidalgo and Cameron counties averaging $58,887. The structural dynamics described above explain the premium.

Ellis County (4 locations, averaging $48,696) and Dallas County (23 locations, $38,622 average) form a second tier, benefiting from suburban density and the DFW metro's strong casual dining culture. Dallas County's average is pulled up by high-performing suburban locations like Cockrell Hill ($67,912).

Bexar County (San Antonio) performs well at $37,972 across 13 locations, with the top location doing $67,067 on Loop 1604, likely a high-traffic suburban corridor site. Tarrant County (Fort Worth) is middle-of-pack at $35,213 across 19 locations.

Harris County (Houston) notably underperforms. The city of Houston itself has 14 locations averaging $27,829: 22% below the statewide mean. The likely explanation is competitive saturation: Houston has one of the densest restaurant scenes in the country. A Chili's in Katy or Pearland is competing with dozens of restaurants and bars for the same alcohol dollar. In Brownsville, it's competing with almost nothing.

Standout non-metro performers include Bastrop ($61,880), Seguin ($58,121), Denton ($57,498), and Portland ($57,345), all mid-size Texas cities where Chili's likely benefits from the same limited-competition dynamic as the RGV, albeit without the cross-border and seasonal demand layers.

The Competitive Extinction Context

Chili's location-level performance becomes even more significant when set against the broader casual dining collapse.

TGI Friday's shrank from 601 US locations to approximately 85 after filing Chapter 11 in November 2024, an 86% contraction. Red Lobster filed Chapter 11 in May 2024, closing 130+ locations. Hooters filed in March 2025 with $376 million in debts. Buca di Beppo liquidated entirely. Denny's announced 150 closures. The full-service restaurant segment contracted nearly 18% from 2019 to 2024, and Black Box Intelligence estimates 9% of remaining full-service units are at risk for closure in 2026.

Chili's didn't just survive this. The traffic that previously went to these competitors had to go somewhere, and much of it landed at Chili's, driven by the chain's value positioning (the $10.99 "3 for Me" menu), viral TikTok momentum (41 million Triple Dippers sold in FY2025), and a marketing budget that quadrupled from $32 million to $137 million in three years.

In Texas specifically, the Texas Restaurant Association reported 52% of restaurants saw decreasing traffic in Q3 2025. For Chili's to post these reported numbers against that backdrop suggests significant traffic capture from closing competitors, particularly in smaller markets where a single TGI Friday's or Applebee's closure can redirect substantial weekly volume to the remaining chains.

What the Variance Means for Operators, Investors, and Distributors

A 31% coefficient of variation across 218 standardized locations challenges the assumption that chain performance is primarily brand-driven. The same menu, the same marketing, and the same TikTok virality produce measurably different results depending on three hyper-local factors: competitive density (how many alternatives exist within a 10-minute drive), demographic fit (family size, age distribution, cultural dining habits), and demand layering (tourism, cross-border traffic, seasonal populations).

For commercial real estate professionals evaluating casual dining pad sites, the RGV data makes a compelling case for markets that score high on all three factors. The 3.3x revenue premium of Brownsville over the Houston average suggests that chasing population density may miss the highest-performing opportunities.

For beverage distributors building Texas territory plans, the RGV's 9 locations averaging nearly $59K/month represent disproportionate volume in a compact footprint. An on-premise rep covering the Valley handles fewer accounts but materially higher per-account revenue than a Houston counterpart covering 14 locations at roughly half the RGV revenue.

For investors modeling Brinker's growth trajectory, the Texas variance raises a question: what does the distribution look like in other large states? If the same structural dynamics apply (and there's reason to believe border markets in Arizona, New Mexico, and California may show similar patterns) the upside in specific trade areas could be significantly larger than national averages suggest.

Source: Texas beverage tax receipts for every location on a Brinker / Chili's permit, on-premise alcohol only, nominal, with a 45 to 60 day filing lag. Of 368 historical Chili's permits, 220 had recent filings and 218 reported revenue. DFW Airport units run by Star Concessions are analyzed separately. RGV covers Hidalgo (7) and Cameron (2) counties; Houston means the 14 stores inside city limits.