Texas Bars Had Their Best Summer Since 2022. Red Lobster's Bar Revenue Fell 13.4%.

The market turned

Texas bars grew this summer for the first time since 2022. Same-store beverage revenue across 16,028 Texas venues rose 0.4% from July through September, after falls of 3.5%, 6.4% and 3.5% in the three summers before. Red Lobster's 41 Texas restaurants went the other way, down 13.4%.

The company is now adding to the bar. On Oct. 12 it launched a Late Night Happy Hour, Monday to Friday from 9 p.m. to close, with $6 cocktails, wine and beer, and added a sixth Endless Shrimp flavor, OLD BAY Seasoned Scampi. Endless Shrimp has been back since Aug. 17 at $24.99, its second run this year. On Oct. 7 Red Lobster made Andy Pitts its permanent chief marketing officer and promoted Jon Tryzbiak to chief information officer.

Red Lobster went the other way

Red Lobster's 41 Texas restaurants reported $1.41 million in beverage revenue over the same three months, down 13.4% from $1.63 million a year earlier. Thirty-eight were down. The three that grew were both of El Paso's remaining stores and Wichita Falls. Liquor, about 72% of beverage revenue, fell 13.4%, wine fell 16.0% and beer fell 11.6%.

That put Red Lobster last among the 11 casual dining and seafood chains with at least seven qualifying Texas restaurants. Cheddar's was next at down 11.3%. Pappadeaux and LongHorn Steakhouse were each up 1.7%. Red Lobster's stores also averaged $11,456 a month in bar revenue over the quarter, the least of the 11.

The surrounding blocks held up. The 768 venues within a mile of the 41 stores fell 1.3% as a group, and 22 of the 41 one-mile rings grew. Red Lobster beat its own ring at four stores.

The summer it's lapping

The base year matters. Red Lobster's seafood boils launched in June 2025 and took off in July, when its Texas stores were up 42.7% on a year earlier. Measured against 2024 instead, the 41 stores were up 6.2% this summer, and each month from July through September was positive on that basis. Against 2023, the summer of the $20 Endless Shrimp deal, they were down 29.5%, all 41 of them.

The two months with Endless Shrimp running start to finish were the best of May through September. May, the first full month of the spring run, was up 18.9%, with five stores down. September, the first full month of the second run, was down 1.9%, with 23 lower. July, with no promotion and last year's boil peak to lap, fell 26.1%. Each month laps a different base: May 2025 was down 20.3%, July 2025 up 42.7% and September 2025 up 10.7%. The filings can't isolate what the promotion did.

Wine has been the weak line all year. Through September it's down 14.0%, while liquor is up 0.2% and beer is down 0.5%. Across all nine months the 41 stores are down 1.7%.

The tail we wrote about in March

Our March piece ended on the weak tail of Texas stores, mostly rural and border restaurants the seafood boils didn't lift, and on whether the new owners would close it. "The next 12 months of filings will answer it," we wrote.

Seven months in, two stores have stopped filing, and neither was one of the stores we named. Laredo, McAllen and Brownsville are all still open. The El Paso store on Gateway Boulevard West reported its last positive month in March; the El Paso Times reported it closed March 23. The Lewisville store on South Stemmons Freeway reported its last positive month in April, and Google lists it as permanently closed. We found no public report of that closing. Both were growing in the first quarter, El Paso by 3.8% and Lewisville by 9.0%. Texas went from 43 filing Red Lobsters through March to 42 in April and 41 since May, out of 497 U.S. restaurants on the company's site in August.

The six biggest boil gainers we named in March all fell this summer. Houston's Highway 6 store, Killeen, Webster, Katy, Round Rock and Mesquite were down between 12.0% and 30.8% in the third quarter. The Rio Grande Valley and Laredo stores fell too: Laredo by 9.7%, Brownsville by 21.9%, and the two McAllen stores by 4.6% and 30.3%.

Five price tiers

Red Lobster doesn't charge one price in Texas. Pourcast's menu pricing data has store-level online-ordering prices for 39 of the 41 restaurants as of Oct. 27, and each store sits in one of five tiers. The tier sets the price of nearly everything on the menu. Of the 137 items listed at 35 or more stores, every one follows the same tier order, and only 10, the kids' plates, three sauces and a souvenir cup, cost the same everywhere.

The Ultimate Feast is $43.99 at 18 stores, including Killeen, Abilene, Waco and Houston's Highway 6 location. It's $48.99 at one, on South Lamar Boulevard in Austin. The Sailor's Seafood Boil runs $28.99 to $32.99 on the same split. The Classic Caesar Salad is $9.99, $10.99 or $11.99.

The tiers don't follow metro lines. San Antonio's four stores split between the bottom two. Austin's two sit in the top two, with San Marcos and Odessa sharing the second-highest. Both El Paso stores are in the middle tier, with Plano, Round Rock, Corpus Christi and Brownsville among others.

Tier and bar revenue move independently. In the third quarter the median store in each tier fell between 5.0% and 18.0%, with no order by price, and four of the five tiers have nine stores or fewer. Over the past 12 months the tier medians run from down 9.5% to up 2.6%, again in no order. Online menus don't carry Endless Shrimp, which is dine-in only, and their prices may differ from dine-in.

October is the test

The Late Night Happy Hour aims at the bar. October filings arrive in late November, the first month with it, from Oct. 12, against an easy comparison: October 2025 was up 4.3% on 2024, a fraction of July's jump.

The shrimp math is still harder than in 2023. Endless Shrimp has gone from $20 in June 2023 to $24.99, up 25%. U.S. wholesale shrimp prices averaged about 40% more in the third quarter of 2026 than in the same quarter of 2023, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' producer price index, though they were down 6.5% from the third quarter of 2025. That's a national index, not Red Lobster's contract cost.

Sources: Texas beverage tax receipts, July 2015 to September 2026, reported beverage revenue in nominal dollars. Same-store comparisons count a venue only if it reported positive revenue in every month of both windows: 41 Red Lobster stores for 2026 against 2025 and 2024, 16,028 Texas venues for the market and 768 venues within a straight-line mile of the 41 stores. Peer chains have at least seven qualifying Texas stores. Statewide September filings are about 95% complete; all 41 Red Lobster stores have filed. Store prices are Pourcast's menu pricing data, online-ordering menus for 39 of 41 stores observed Oct. 27, 2026. Company details from Red Lobster's Aug. 17, Oct. 7 and Oct. 8 releases and its restaurant locator; closing date from the El Paso Times; shrimp prices from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.