Dave & Buster’s hired an airport bar veteran as COO. Texas receipts say the bar isn’t the problem.

The seat sat empty while the bar recovered

Dave & Buster’s ran without a Chief Operations Officer from January to August 2026. Tony Wehner, COO since 2022, moved over to run Main Event as brand president in January. Nobody replaced him while total comps fell 5.4% in the quarter ended May. Then August brought a full reset in one month: CEO Tarun Lal retired after thirteen months, CFO Darin Harper took the top job, and Busby arrived to fill the operations seat. The June earnings call had telegraphed it. “We will be announcing a new COO by next week,” Lal told analysts on June 15, in the same breath as introducing a new chief marketing officer from Planet Fitness, a new chief technology officer from Wingstop and a new chief legal officer. The COO announcement never arrived as a release. Busby’s appointment sits quietly on the company’s investor relations page, the least publicized hire of the most consequential reset since 2021.

Her background is worth stating precisely, because the version circulating on aggregator accounts inflates it. Busby joined Red Robin as a training general manager in 2003 and left in 2022 as Vice President of Operations, responsible for 230 restaurants and roughly $670 million in annual sales. She then ran SSP America, first as COO and later as president of its operations, commercial, culinary and marketing functions. SSP’s North America division reported £852.3 million in revenue for its latest fiscal year, about $1.1 billion, across 54 airports. The aggregators round that up to $1.2 billion. The audited figure is $1.1 billion. And before all of it, from 2001 to 2003, she ran food, beverage and entertainment at a casino called Funsters. Her career started at the closest thing to an arcade she’d touch for twenty-five years, then spent those years perfecting the bar.

Every Texas venue licensed to sell liquor files its alcohol sales with the state monthly, and those filings are audited. We pulled them for all 16 Texas Dave & Buster’s locations, plus the sibling brand and the comp set, through June 2026, to see what she’s inheriting.

Nine months, to the month

The 13 Texas venues that filed in all 36 months posted $14.6 million in beverage receipts over the trailing twelve months through June, up 4.2%. The shape of the year matters more than the average. July through September 2025 wobbled between +4.9% and -6.1%. October flipped to +7.2% and the line hasn’t gone back: +6.7% in November, +5.4% in December, positive through the winter, then +6.9% in April, +13.9% in May and +11.0% in June. Nine consecutive positive months, and the two most recent are the two strongest.

October 2025 is when Dave & Buster’s brought back what management calls its historically proven menu, part of the Back to Basics plan that followed the failed remodel-heavy strategy of the Chris Morris era. On its June earnings call the company said food and beverage comps had been positive for nine straight months, running around 5% in the latest quarter. In the one state where beverage sales are audited and public, the filings corroborate the claim almost exactly. Nine months claimed nationally, nine months visible in Texas, same start date.

The company’s own commentary supplies the mechanism. Guests are playing 20% more games per visit than a year ago and dwell time is up nearly as much, per CFO Darin Harper, and longer visits feed the bar. “Consumers actually are spending more time on our games floor,” Lal said, “and that’s what’s also helping us actually drive F&B revenue.” Fewer people are coming. The ones who come stay longer and drink more. Beverage receipts can grow while total comps fall 5.4%, and in Texas they measurably do.

Nine of the 13 comparable venues grew, from Euless at -5.5% to Arlington at +14.3%, with Dallas at +11.2% and Corpus Christi at +9.3%. Growth in nine of 13 trade areas spanning border markets, suburbs and urban cores reads as a menu and program effect, not a local one.

The brand the last COO went to run

The uncomfortable comparison is a family matter. Dave & Buster’s paid $835 million for Dallas-based Main Event in 2022, and when Wehner left the COO seat in January it was to run Main Event directly. Texas is Main Event’s home state and largest footprint, 22 comparable venues to Dave & Buster’s 13. When we split the two brands at the venue level earlier this year, Main Event was already the weaker line.

It still is. Those 22 venues posted $15.1 million over the same trailing twelve months, down 3.4%, with only 6 of 22 growing and the worst venue down 20.1%. Main Event got its own new menu in May, the company said on the June call, and the monthly filings show a flicker: +5.3% in April, +2.9% in May, then -0.4% in June. Two positive months against nine is not an inflection yet. October was the test at Dave & Buster’s; May is the test here, and the next few filings will grade it. Per venue, that’s $686K against Dave & Buster’s $1.12 million. Same parent, one state, opposite directions at the bar. The brand that recovered fastest after the pandemic, the one that once looked like the acquisition justifying itself, is now the one shrinking where the receipts are audited. Busby inherits the brand that’s mending. Her predecessor in the COO seat inherited the one that isn’t.

Red Robin, where Busby spent 19 years and built her operating reputation, offers the postscript. When Red Robin’s CFO talked up a bar-led recovery, we tested it against the Texas filings. The update is not kinder: its 25 comparable Texas venues are down 6.6% over the trailing twelve months and down 15.7% against two years ago, at $102K per venue. The chain where she learned the bar business is the one whose Texas bar keeps shrinking.

What this data doesn’t say

Honest limits, stated plainly. These are beverage receipts only, no food, no game cards, no events. Beverage is roughly 11% of Dave & Buster’s revenue, so a growing bar doesn’t fix the company. Texas is 16 of 184 Dave & Buster’s locations, and the state may not represent the chain. Same-store receipts remain 8.5% below their level of two years ago, which makes this a recovery inside a hole rather than new-high growth. The streak’s acceleration in May and June coincides with soft months across the Texas comp set, and June carries a second asterisk: the World Cup kicked off June 11 with a full watch activation, ticketed viewing parties and tournament-themed drinks, so part of that +11.0% is an event, not a run rate. July’s filings will separate the two. Total comps, meanwhile, improved only to down roughly 4% quarter-to-date on the second-quarter call commentary. Topgolf, the category’s outlier, gave back -20% in both months after a year of double-digit gains, so some of Dave & Buster’s spring strength is an easier neighborhood.

The larger caveat runs the other way. Entertainment is 63% of revenue and it’s the segment dragging total comps down 5.4%. Lal named the enemy plainly on his final earnings call: “the biggest competitor really is a couch at our home.” Busby’s career is throughput, bars and kitchens in captive-audience venues where the traffic shows up on its own. Nobody at an airport is choosing between the terminal bar and their couch. At Dave & Buster’s, everybody is. The receipts say the part of the business that matches her resume is already working. The part that doesn’t match it is the job.

Few incoming operators get handed nine months of momentum on day one. What Busby does with the other 63% of the revenue line is the tenure question, and the filings will report monthly either way.

Methodology

Beverage receipts are drawn from audited monthly filings that every Texas venue licensed to sell liquor submits to the state, covering July 2023 through June 2026, the most recent fully reported month. Same-store figures include only venues that reported in all 36 months: 13 of 16 Texas Dave & Buster’s locations, 22 Main Event locations, 25 Red Robin locations. Corporate figures and executive quotes are drawn from company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the June 15, 2026 earnings call. SSP America revenue is the North America segment of SSP Group plc’s audited annual results, converted at prevailing rates. Cohort sizes are printed on every comparison. Receipts are alcohol sales only and are not total venue revenue.

Pourcast is a Texas hospitality intelligence platform. All Pourcast analysis is derived from public records. pourcast.ai