20071011

Drinkin' good in the neighborhood

Any idea which restaurant chain leads the industry in beverage alcohol sales?

A hint: Its name puts the emphasis on the food part of its service rather than on the drinks.

If you guessed Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar, you get a gold star.

Applebee's 1,942 restaurants had total alcoholic beverage sales of $567,864,000 in 2006, accounting for an average of 12.5% of each guest check. That's according to the Technomic Top 500 Report, published in Cheers magazine.

The rest of the top 10:
(2.) T.G.I. Friday's, $499,380,000.
(3.) Chili's Bar & Grill, $475,116,000.
(4.) Outback Steakhouse, $327,375,000.
(5.) Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar, $252,024,000.
(6.) Olive Garden, $233,177,000.
(7.) Red Lobster, $210,103,000.
(8.) Hooters, $205,875,000.
(9.) The Cheesecake Factory, $167,310,000.
(10.) Ruby Tuesday, $157,950000.
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To Dowd's Brews Notebook latest entry.
To Dowd's Non-Alcohol Drinks Notebook latest entry.
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2 comments:

Rick D said...

The figure that surprises me is the Cheesecake Factory one. They have *far* less stores than any of the other chains mentioned. If you did these numbers on a per store average, they'd blow away all of the competition by several times.

William M. Dowd said...

Good point, Rick.

The Cheescake Factory tends to have more seats than Applebee's and many others, but that is balanced by the fact they don't have the customer turnover (more people linger there).

The numbers game is always an interesting one.