A Month-By-Month Look At How Much Money Was Spent On Booze At Bars, Clubs, Venues, Restaurants And Hotels In Dallas Proper Throughout 2018.

Welcome to Bar Raised, our recurring column that proves that 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 navigable database. And then we break down Dallas’ numbers for you here.

Folks in Dallas spent more than $881 million on booze in Dallas bars and restaurants in 2018. That’s a lot! But how does it stack up to previous years — or other Texas cities — for that matter? Well, let’s take a closer look.

For starters, the $881,115,616 total is almost exactly $40 million more than the 2017 total.

Breaking things down a little further, here’s a month-by-month look at how much money was spent on booze in Dallas bars, clubs, venues, hotels and restaurants this year.

• January: ~$65 Million
• February: ~$67 Million
• March: ~$81 Million
• April: ~$62 Million
• May: ~$77 Million
• June: ~$78 Million
• July: ~$67 Million
• August: ~$68 Million
• September: ~$65 Million
• October: ~$77 Million
• November: ~$71 Million
• December: ~$69 Million

That comes out to a roughly $70.5 million-per-month average. Here’s what those numbers look like in graph form, overlaid on top of figures from the previous three years as well.

So: Where did all those dollars go? Well, mostly to Bottled Blonde and its attached sister bar The Backyard, which share a liquor license. The Deep Ellum mega-bar raked in $14,434,353 in booze sales this year. In March alone, they took in $1,566,593, representing the best single month of any bar in town. By comparison, the American Airlines Center did $9,990,431 in alcohol sales in all of 2018.

Speaking of the best months, let’s break those figures down some more, splitting up the liquor, wine and beer sales. Bottled Blonde was the big winner here, too, boasting the best single month of beer sales (in March with $684,006) and liquor (in December with $862,452). Upscale eatery Nick & Sam’s did manage to outdo them in the wine department, however, pouring $475,428 worth of bottles in December.

But how does Dallas’ booze consumption compare to other cities? Turns out that info is easy to find as well. Here are the top five Texas cities based on total dollars spent on alcohol in 2018.

• Houston: $1,199,531,917
• Dallas: $881,115,616
• Austin: $808,750,266
• San Antonio: $629,493,314
• Fort Worth: $278,049,558

Here’s what the city-by-city spending looks like in bar graph form:

While it looks like Houston has us smoked, one must also consider the population difference. If you divide Houston’s $1.2 billion annual booze total by its 2.2 million population, that comes out to $545 that each Houstonite spends annually on booze. Doing the same with Dallas’ $881 million total and its 1.3 million population yields a whopping $677 that each Dallasite spends annually on booze.

Like we said, that’s a lot!

Total alcohol sales in Dallas in 2018: $881,115,616
Last year’s total: $841,926,756

No more articles