Beer Gave Way to Cocktails. Now Beer Is Fighting Back. Inside Texas Roadhouse's 19-Year Beverage Shift.

The Crossover Nobody Announced

For thirteen consecutive years — from the first Texas Comptroller filing in our dataset through 2019 — every Texas Roadhouse in the state poured more beer than liquor. The split ran approximately 50/45 in favor of beer across the system, with wine accounting for a consistent 4–5%. The menu changed. The locations multiplied. The ratio barely moved.

Then COVID closed dining rooms.

When restaurants reopened in 2020 with limited capacity, outdoor seating, and reduced bar service, something shifted in how guests ordered. By the time audited sales data reflected full operations again, liquor had overtaken beer — 52.8% to 43.3%. The following year, with pent-up demand and a vaccinated dining public, liquor hit 55.2%. Beer fell to 41.1%. The crossover wasn't a seasonal blip. It stuck.

The mechanism isn't fully resolved by the data alone, but the pattern aligns with national trends. During COVID, home cocktail culture exploded. Canned cocktails and RTDs drove a spirits consumption shift in off-premise channels that carried back into dining rooms when they reopened. Tequila surpassed whiskey as the #2 spirit by value in 2023. At Texas Roadhouse — historically a beer-and-margarita brand — margaritas appear to have been the primary beneficiary. The chain's own $5 everyday margarita promotion launched during this window and was described by CEO Jerry Morgan on the Q4 2024 earnings call as "a superstar."

Now beer is fighting back. From its low of 41.1% in 2021, beer's share has recovered to 45.9% in 2025 — the strongest showing since before the pandemic. The question the data can't yet answer is whether this is a mean reversion to the pre-COVID norm or a structural shift that stops somewhere in the middle. The 2025 trend line, with beer gaining nearly 5 percentage points over four years, suggests momentum. But liquor still holds the system-level lead.

One thing the trend does confirm: Texas Roadhouse's own disclosure that alcohol mix fell to 8.8% of restaurant sales in FY2025 — a 20-year low — isn't just a per-unit consumption story. It's a category story. Guests may be shifting from two beers to one cocktail, or from alcohol to a mocktail entirely. The absolute dollar trend in Texas reflects this: 67 of 72 comparable locations saw alcohol revenue decline in 2025, with system-wide Texas alcohol revenue falling roughly 2% despite the addition of five new locations.

The Permian Basin Is a Different Country

The regional beverage data is where the market structure thesis becomes impossible to dismiss.

Midland and Odessa — the two Permian Basin locations — have appeared at the top of the Texas revenue rankings in every year of our dataset. In 2025: Midland at $117K/month, Odessa at $109K/month. The chain average across 84 Texas locations is $70K. They're running 67% and 56% above average respectively, with no franchise advantage, no unique menu, no special pricing.

What makes the Permian Basin data more interesting in 2025 than in prior years isn't just the revenue premium — it's that these two locations are the most beer-forward in the state. Midland: 55.7% beer. Odessa: 55.9% beer. The rest of Texas has spent five years trending toward cocktails. The Permian Basin never moved.

Compare that to Houston, where 10 locations average $62K/month and run 55.7% liquor — almost the mirror image of Midland's split. Or to Grand Prairie (Store #26), which runs 59.3% liquor — the highest liquor concentration in the Texas system — on $100K/month in revenue.

The segmentation isn't subtle. Blue-collar energy-sector workers in West Texas drink domestics. White-collar suburban diners in DFW and Houston order cocktails. Same Texas Roadhouse. Same margarita on the menu. The trade area dictates the pour.

This has real implications for per-unit revenue modeling. Beer typically carries a lower check contribution than cocktails — a draft pint at $5–7 versus a house margarita at $8–10+. Yet Midland and Odessa consistently lead the state in total alcohol revenue. The volume thesis overrides the per-drink check thesis: energy workers visit frequently, stay late, and drink more rounds. Market structure — specifically, the combination of above-average disposable income, limited dining alternatives, and a culture centered on the restaurant as primary third-place venue — produces the revenue premium.

San Antonio tells a different regional story. Six locations, $82K average monthly, 50.7% liquor — the closest to a balanced split of any major metro in the state, and the highest average revenue of any multi-location metro. Corpus Christi ($101K/month) and Brownsville ($90K/month) anchor the South Texas thesis from the prior piece in this series: thinner casual dining competition in markets where TXRH represents the default full-service choice.

The Paradox of Store #26

The operational frame for this dataset runs through a single location: Store #26 in Grand Prairie, Texas.

Jerry Morgan joined Texas Roadhouse in 1997 as Managing Partner of the chain's first Texas location. He worked his way through operations over two decades, became COO in 2019, was named CEO the day Kent Taylor died in March 2021, and has run the company since. In 2025, under his leadership, TXRH surpassed Olive Garden to become the #1 casual dining chain in America by systemwide sales — $5.5 billion nationally.

Store #26 still does $100K/month in alcohol revenue. It ranks fifth in the state. It has the highest liquor mix in the Texas system at 59.3% — a reflection of the Grand Prairie trade area's demographics more than any intentional programming decision.

There's a version of this story that's purely sentimental: the CEO's first store, still performing. But the more interesting reading is structural. The Managing Partner model — in which each general manager operates with equity-like profit sharing, promoted exclusively from within — was designed by Kent Taylor specifically to replicate Store #26's performance across hundreds of locations. The idea was that an owner-operator mentality produced outcomes that a hired manager couldn't. Morgan is its clearest proof of concept.

The 19-year data bears this out. Texas Roadhouse's Texas system has never posted a year with negative total alcohol revenue — not in 2009, not in 2020, not in 2025. The system-level decline in 2025 is the first time absolute annual dollars fell even modestly (from $72.1M in 2024 to $70.8M in 2025), and it was driven entirely by per-unit mix shift, not by location closures or traffic collapse. Sixty-seven locations declined. Five grew. Net: down 2%. In a casual dining environment where Red Lobster, TGI Fridays, and Hooters have all filed for bankruptcy protection since 2023, a 2% alcohol revenue decline at the #1 brand in the category is noise, not signal.

The paradox is this: Texas Roadhouse is the most consistent alcohol revenue machine in Texas casual dining by every structural measure — tight unit variance, sustained positive traffic growth, industry-leading AUV — and it is selling less alcohol per visit than at any point in its history. The decline is real and secular. The business is fine.

For Operators and Investors

The audited sales data on Texas Roadhouse offers three practical takeaways.

First, the beverage mix shift is a consumer behavior story, not a brand failure. When 67 of 72 locations decline in alcohol revenue simultaneously, the cause isn't management or operations — it's category. Operators in casual dining who are seeing similar trends should benchmark against the secular data, not their own prior-year numbers.

Second, the Permian Basin premium is available to any brand willing to underwrite it. The combination of energy-sector wages, limited competition, and guest frequency produces unit economics that no DFW suburban strip center can replicate. The operators and investors who understand this use location economics — not ratings or review volume — as their primary site selection filter.

Third, the gap between $117K and $42K within the same brand and state is the most useful number in this dataset. It means that a 2.8x revenue differential is achievable without changing the menu, the price point, or the operating model. The only lever is the trade area. For any operator evaluating a new Texas Roadhouse-adjacent concept — or any investor underwriting casual dining real estate — the lesson is the same one the audited sales data has taught in every piece in this series: the zip code is the strategy.

Methodology and Data Notes

Revenue figures sourced from audited Texas beverage sales filings, 2007–2025. Google ratings and review counts reflect public data at time of analysis; three locations (Grand Prairie, Lubbock, Austin South) show N/A due to geocoding gaps in the enrichment pipeline — these are confirmed active venues with valid permits.

Unit count reflects 84 confirmed locations via public store locator data (February 2026). After deduplication of variant taxpayer IDs at shared physical addresses, 85 active locations with 2025 filing data were confirmed. All figures represent alcohol revenue reported under applicable permits.

Corporate financial data (AUV, alcohol mix percentage, same-store sales) sourced from TXRH 10-K filings (FY2025, filed February 2026) and quarterly earnings call transcripts. The 8.8% alcohol-to-restaurant-sales ratio is a company-disclosed figure covering all company-owned restaurants (Texas Roadhouse, Bubba's 33, and Jaggers).

Data source: audited Texas beverage sales filings. Coverage: On-premise alcohol revenue only. Reporting lag: 45–60 days typical. All figures nominal, not inflation-adjusted.

Pourcast tracks 57,000+ Texas venues across 19 years of filings. The full location-level Texas Roadhouse dataset is available on the platform.