Where Dallas diners are spending their money, and what it all means.
By Brooklyn Rodgers | October 21st, 2024 | 7:40 pm
The city of Dallas finds itself in a precarious situation when it comes to how we define our hospitality landscape.
In just a few weeks, the Dallas Michelin Guide will be released, permanently altering our dining discourse. Pre-Michelin Guide, our collective commentary on food has been in a bit of disarray. With only one salaried food critic in Dallas, a dozen other semi-professional and amateur writers churning out content, and the new wave of social media food bloggers, it begs the question: Who is the authority on the Dallas food scene?
I don’t mean to suggest that the shiny new Michelin Guide should or will become the end-all-be-all influence on the Dallas dining scene. Regardless of how you feel about the hierarchical, parochial, and perhaps eurocentric guide that will come out on November 11th, we are undeniably getting closer to establishing meaningful and authoritative metrics for what makes a good restaurant in Dallas.
So, how do we prepare for post-Michelin Guide-Dallas? By continuing to read and support local sources for food journalism (my favorites are Brian Reinhart at D Magazine and Courtney Smith at Eater), and by relying on the most neutral source of all: public data.
Every month-ish, a report on the top 25 performing bars and restaurants in Dallas is released on www.alcoholsales.com. Alcohol sales are one of the most significant indicators of a bar or restaurant’s profitability, accounting for the most profit margin across sales breakdowns. Data on alcohol sales ultimately shows us who is who in Dallas hospitality, regardless of their press, luxury buildouts, prime location, or brilliance of concept.
Profitable bars and restaurants are ones to keep an eye on. After all, concepts which perform well get to stay open while so many others shutter in the face of labor shortages, high food costs, and operator inexperience. Profitable restaurants- and the hospitality groups that operate them- tend to execute on the opportunity to open up new concepts or locations, further solidifying their impact on the hospitality landscape in our city. This is the case for the operators of the beloved Old Monk, one of August’s most profitable bars, whose owners are in the process of opening two to three new bars, bolstering their portfolio which also includes the Skellig and Spider Murphy’s.
What follows is a deep dive into the Top 25 performing restaurant and bar concepts in the city of Dallas for August. While interesting, this list eclipses many of the restaurant concepts Dallas diners know and love. For this analysis, I also excluded hotels, venues, nightclubs, and dance halls, which make up a decent chunk of August alcohol sales.
Our top-ranking bar/restaurant for August is the beloved Katy Trail Ice House (DFB Capital, LLC) which surpassed $700,000 in total receipts.
Because I can, and because I think it’s funny, I’ve organized Dallas’s most profitable bar and restaurant concepts into an NYT-esque Approval Matrix. The Dining Approval Matrix is based on relevance, profitability, overall goodness, and whether the spot is actually cool.
The reason why many of these concepts fell on the lefthand side of our matrix is the same reason that they are so profitable: they are corporate; ie., operated by a serious hospitality group that is equipped to do serious volume- not to mention the multi-million dollar enterprises that operate the venues and hotels I specifically excluded from this article.
Many of Dallas’s smaller concepts that offer a more diner-focused experience are not structured for volume and have not had the time some of these restaurants have had to develop their internal systems, audience, marketing, or catering and events business. Many of these concepts are decades old (see the bottom left quadrant for familiar favorites I’ve dubbed the old faithful). And even more come from out-of-town hospitality groups (top left quadrant) such as Komodo from Miami and the Monarch from Chicago- you have to already have stupid funding to transport your fine dining concept to a new major city. Speaking of, where is Major Food Group on this list?
So Dallas’s most profitable restaurants are corporate, big, and old (shocker). For these same reasons, many of these concepts are often not talked about often, or in any way cool.
While I personally recommend most concepts on this graph except the top left quadrant (a no-fly zone), I find it troublesome that so many genuinely cool and good concepts wield less influence in the Dallas hospitality landscape. Less profit for these smaller concepts means less staying power and smaller potential to expand.
The incoming Michelin guide will shed light on some worthy, diner experience-focused concepts rather than the volume monsters we see here. But it will always be important to keep an eye on the bigger picture: what are all of the sources telling us, be it the Michelin Group, the local dining critics we know and love, or the public alcohol sales data we spend too much free time parsing. And maybe, support local and smaller concepts, who have such a good thing going it’s not on anybody’s radar yet.
For more breakdown of the concepts featured in The Dining Approval Matrix, see below.
The Old Faithfuls – restaurants that are printing money, that no one talks about
#7 Kitchen + Kocktails – We just don’t hear often about Kevin Kelleys’ booming hospitality empire
#8 Nick & Sam’s – This long-standing steakhouse is now operated Sam Romano, the son of Phil Romano, Macaroni grill mogul. Nick & Sam’s doesn’t need any press, although they get a lot from their frequent celebrity visitors
#12 Javiers – Loved, trafficked, and not generally referenced in the cultural lexicon
#14 The Mexican – Notably hated by lead dining critic Brian Reinhart at D Magazine, and recently lauded by his colleague Courney Smith at Eater, The Mexican received most of its early notoriety in the press for the millions of dollars pricetag on its’ luxury buildout and outrageous prices
#21 Al Biernat’s – Nice to see they are still performing in the wake of the ALS diagnosis of their main operator
The Bad Timers – places you really don’t need to go to, but apparently many do
#10 Casablanca – Apparently the gem of Bishop Arts?
#11 Monarch – No food writer’s love child, partly their fault for being the spawn of a Chicago hospitality group
#20 Ojos Locos – A titty bar, a chain, why?
#23 Chelsea’s Corner – Where SMU students go to swipe the family AMEX
#25 Komodo – The poster child for out-of-town hospitality group hate
Places You Should Actually Go
#5 Katy Trail Ice House – If you’ve been in Dallas for longer than five minutes, you know about this place
#15 the Skellig – Whose operators are notably expanding to Oak Cliff
#19 Vidorra – Still wanting to try their salsa lessons
Brooklyn in Dallas 