Investment — The Well

The chart KSL didn't see before they bought Invited Clubs 2026-05-11 KSL Capital Partners agreed to buy Invited Clubs from Apollo for ~$2.6B at roughly 8x EBITDA. Press coverage stopped at the multiple. The Texas Comptroller's monthly mixed-beverage file — the only U.S. dataset that exposes private-club F&B revenue at the venue level — tells a two-stage story: a three-year crater right after the take-private, then a Sunbelt-led recovery that ranks Apollo first over four years and dead last over nine. Both reads are honest. KSL is paying the bull case.
The Saturation Question: 58,000 Restaurants, 31.7 Million Texans — Is There Still Room? 2025-09-15 Texas has ~58,400 eating and drinking establishments for 31.7 million people — roughly 184 per 100K residents, well below the national average of ~290. But metro-level analysis reveals that saturation is hyper-local: Austin's core is crowded while DFW suburbs still have runway.
The Data-Driven Guide to Bar Site Selection in Texas 2025-06-25 The "60% fail in year one" myth is dead—the real number is 14%. But bad location remains a top killer. We break down the site-selection frameworks chains use, the saturation thresholds that matter, and how actual Audited revenue data changes the equation.