Texas Restaurant Alcohol Sales by Genre: 2024 Data & Trends

Nobody opens a restaurant because they're passionate about pouring vodka sodas. You get into the business for the food — the flavors, the family recipes, the freedom to create new and exciting dishes. But let's be honest: the dishes might bring in the diners, but it's the drinks that keep the lights on. When alcohol gross margins are +75%, you best be mindful of your alcohol pairings.

Which Restaurant Concepts Sell The Most Alcohol?

Which genres make the most money? We've got the data. We looked at alcohol sales across Texas restaurants in 2024 and broke them down by food genre. The results? Some genres are absolute cash cows when it comes to booze, while others... well, let's just say they're a little drier. So whether you're slinging tacos or tempura, this report shows which cuisines bring the party — and the profits.

We isolated this study to venues with a strong enough food component to be considered a restaurant, but ignored venues like "Top Golf" where you might be able to get a meal, but it's not a restaurant. Otherwise this is specific to 2024 and only for venues with 12-months of receitps. Additionally, a lot of concepts have a few genres, for example, Steakhouses often have a strong Seafood offering. When this is the case, we count an instance in both Steakhouse and Seafood for simplicity, otherwise this would be a post about 100+ genres which make my graphs look bad.

You get some wild outperformers, so looking at this on a median basis is the best way to evaluate "genres". This removes the noise that comes from places likes Mastro's Steakhouse in Houston ($17.7M in 2024), Katy Trail Ice House in Dallas ($9.5M), and Matt's El Rancho in Austin ($8.3M). Those are fun sales to look at but they aren't the norm and they skew things.

Looking at these results, some patterns make intuitive sense:

• Bar & Pub Food These are bars first (they wanted to sling vodka sodas). They operate with relatively cheap kitchens and have pretty strong alcohol sales ($599K median across 551 venues). You could probably infer that they have decreased food sales though,

• Steakhouse Apparently it's hard to mess up a steak, ($560K median across 835 venues)

• European and Tapas rank high but with smaller samples (93 and 44 venues respectively) - these boutique concepts can be quite profitable. Apparently it's the "Field of Dreams" type business, build it and they will come?

• Asian cuisines cluster toward the bottom, gotta figure out some better cocktail pairings apparently.

Business Risk by Genre: So What Is "CV" — and Why Should You Care?

When you're running a bar or restaurant, consistency is king. That's where coefficient of variation (CV) comes in — it's a statistical way of asking:

"If I open this kind of restaurant, how likely is it that I'll hit the average sales numbers for this genre?"

Breaking It Down Simply

It shows how spread out the sales numbers are within a genre. Think of it as a risk meter: the higher the CV, the more volatile or unpredictable that type of restaurant is when it comes to alcohol sales.

CV = Standard Deviation ÷ Mean Sales

How to Read the Chart

• A CV of 0 – Every single restaurant in that genre makes exactly the same in alcohol sales — perfect predictability (never happens).
• A CV of 1 – Variation in sales is equal to the average — a moderate level of uncertainty.
• A CV of 2 – Sales are twice as volatile as the average. Translation: if the mean sales are $300k, the middle 68% of the venues are somewhere between $0 and $900k (big gap)

Most Predictable (Low Risk):

• Tapas (0.85) and European (0.92) offer the most consistent performance - if you execute the concept properly, results are fairly predictable. Less weight on the owner to execute well, the genre itself carries a lot of the weight for you.

Highest Operator Dependency (High Risk):

• Vegetarian/Vegan (1.77) and Indian (1.76) show the most variation - success depends heavily on execution, location, and operator skill.

This risk analysis reveals why some genres with lower median sales might still be attractive: consistent, predictable returns versus high-stakes, execution-dependent concepts.

Top Restaurant Performers: Where the Ceiling Gets Sky High

Let's get real — if you're a rockstar operator, there's always money to be made.

The median tells you what's typical. But if you've got the team, the vision, and a killer location? The top 10% of restaurants in any genre are playing in a whole different league.

You don't have to pick the genre with the highest median sales. What matters more is how well you execute.

Because a well-run Cajun spot can crush a mediocre steakhouse any day.

But if you're aiming for the stars — if you're ready to take the big shot — this data shows there's serious revenue on the table. So ask yourself: Are you building a place that could be a top 10% outlier? Because in the right hands, any concept can hit it big.

Survival: Business Longevity Analysis

We need to caveat this genre analysis with the fact that this analysis is on 2024. Today’s leaderboard is exactly that: today’s. The genres crushing it in 2024 won’t necessarily be the darlings of 2030, just as many of them barely registered ten years ago. If you pour time and capital into a concept, you want something that can survive the next trend cycle—not disappear when diners chase the next shiny thing.

Look at the data: steakhouses and Tex-Mex spots have been pulling in big checks for nearly a decade on average. I'd be willing to gamble that Texans will continue to enjoy both steaks and tacos going forward though. Their menus evolve, sure, but the underlying appeal never goes out of style. By contrast, buzzy Tapas & European fusion concepts average only six years in business right now. That could be a bright flare of revenue followed—too often—by a dark restaurant space and a “for lease” sign.

Conclusion

Whether you’re chasing a dream or scouting for your next investment, the numbers make one thing clear: not all restaurant concepts are created equal — in sales, in risk, or in staying power.

If you’re concept agnostic, there’s real due diligence to be done. From median sales benchmarks to top 10% outliers, and from volatility metrics to average lifespan by genre, this analysis gives a high-level view of the terrain. And while entrepreneurial skill and hustle are huge variables, they don’t operate in a vacuum. Genre choice matters. Some paths are bumpier. Some have bigger jackpots. And some just have better odds of still being around a decade from now.

It's tough out there right now for restaurants. The broader market headwinds are real — declining alcohol consumption trends. But that makes choosing the right concept even more critical.

And remember this is just the macro view. At BarSavvy, we’re just getting started. City-level patterns, neighborhood nuances, local breakout concepts — those are next. Because the more you know before you launch, the better your chances for success and survival.

Restaurant Concept Performance Data

Source Detail

This analysis examines 9,665 Texas restaurants that operated successfully for all 12 months of 2024, representing every major food genre. All venues met strict criteria: monthly sales >$0 for each month and classification as restaurants or restaurant-bars.