Methodology

Every number on this site comes from the Texas Comptroller Mixed Beverage Gross Receipts public dataset, published at data.texas.gov (dataset naix-2893). We refresh our copy weekly.

Figures are gross alcohol receipts as reported by permit holders to the State of Texas: liquor, beer, and wine sold for on-premise consumption. They are revenue totals, not profit, and they do not include food or non-alcoholic sales.

Rankings cover Mixed Beverage (MB) permits. Common retail locations such as grocery and convenience stores are excluded so the leaderboard reflects bars and restaurants, not package sales.

Permit holders file on a lag, and the Comptroller keeps accepting late and corrected filings for weeks. A month is flagged Partial when it has meaningfully fewer filings than the month before it, which means its totals are still rising. The default view always starts on the newest complete month.

A bar earns the Staple badge after 10 or more years of filings under the same business. Tenure resets when a permit changes hands to a new taxpayer with a new name, or when reported receipts stop for more than two years, so an inherited permit number does not inherit the badge. The Staples view filters the leaderboard to these long-tenured spots: the institutions of a city, not the newest openings.

A bar gets the Hotel badge when it operates at a hotel. The hotels come from the Comptroller’s Hotel Tax Permits list (data.texas.gov dataset hdzd-884n), which names every hotel and motel that collects hotel occupancy tax. The list carries names and addresses only; no hotel revenue appears on this site.

A shared street address is not enough, because airports and shopping centers put many businesses at one address. The bar also has to be tied to the hotel: the same taxpayer, the hotel’s name or brand in the bar’s name, or an operator that runs bars at several hotels. A restaurant that leases space inside a hotel under an unrelated name can be missed, and hotels that closed before 2021 are not on the list. A bar that keeps filing after its hotel closed loses the badge unless its own name says hotel. The badge does not change from period to period, so a bar that opened before its hotel did carries it in older months too. The Hotels view filters the leaderboard to these bars.

This site is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the State of Texas or the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.