Bar Raised.

A Look At How Much The Top Bars In Dallas Earned In April 2016.

Texans like to spend copious amounts of their income participating in the Great American Pastime. We know this because, as Reddit user BadLemur once pointed out, the Texas Comptroller keeps tabs on that sort of thing and makes all that info public record. Any establishment in the state that holds a Mixed Beverage license must report all sales revenue generated from the sale of liquor, beer and wine at their establishments on a monthly basis. The comptroller, in turn, puts all that info into a conveniently downloadable spreadsheet each month. As of April, there were 1,170 establishments in Dallas proper that held such a license. Below we’ve gone ahead and done you the solid of listing out the top 20 Dallas establishments in terms of alcohol sales for the month of April 2016.

Last we counted, there were 35 craft breweries operating in North Texas. According to a new piece in the Dallas Observer, another 11 are set to join those within the year.

That’s a lot of locally-made beer! Heck, that’s a lot of beer, period. But, from what we’ve seen over the past few years (and especially since starting up this monthly column), the local infrastructure can certainly support it.

Yes, we North Texans love to drink.

Our findings after pouring over the alcohol sales totals for Dallas bar and restaurants last month really bears that out. In Dallas alone, a full $10 million more was spent on booze this April than in April 2015. Furthermore, this beer-soaked past month also saw Dallas spending $324,000 more than even the highest grossing month (December) of last year.

Some of those dollars, of course, are coming from bridge-and-tunnel types from such surrounding places as Frisco, which voted earlier this month against making its city wet. Currently, it’s illegal for restaurants in Frisco to earn more than 50 percent of their income from alcohol sales — although that hasn’t stopped some from doing it anyway. A Frisco sports bar called Wild Pitch sold $3.4 million worth of alcohol in 2015, representing some 70 percent of their total income.

Another nearby vote will soon determine whether UNT students can buy alcohol on campus. An application was sent to the TABC on May 17 after the student government association voted in support of the university acquiring a liquor license. Now, TABC has 40 days to make its ruling.

But, really, what we’re most concerned with around here is where those living and/or just drinking it up in Dallas proper spent their hard-earned dollars. To that end, here are April 2016’s top earners.

Total alcohol sales in Dallas in April 2016: $69,692,936.72
Last month’s total: $66,004,963.13