A Month-By-Month Look At How Much Money Was Spent On Booze At Bars, Clubs, Venues, Restaurants And Hotels In Dallas Proper Throughout 2017.

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.

The numbers for how much you drank in 2017 are in, Big D.

And according to those numbers, the Dallas drinking crowd was thirstiest at the end of the summer and right before the kickoff of the holiday period — which, really, makes all the sense in the world since we had a hellish summer and, well, since the holidays are stressful for pretty much everybody.

Here’s a month-by-month breakdown of how much money was spent on booze in Dallas bars, clubs, venues, hotels and restaurants this year.

More of a visual learner? OK. Here are those same figures as compared to the last two years’ numbers.

Now let’s break these numbers down a bit, yeah?

  • On average, right around $65 million was spent in on alcohol in Dallas bars, restaurants, clubs, venues and hotels this year.
  • September was the highest grossing month of 2017 and the second-highest amount seen in the last three years of us keeping tabs on these figures, following only May 2016’s gargantuan $81.7 million total.
  • March was the lowest grossing month, with about $40 million in sales — a figure so far below any amount we’ve seen in three years of looking at these numbers that we’re still a little suspicious that the $40 million figure had to have been the result of a clerical error on the part of the comptroller, since it makes very little sense at all.

Also interesting? Booze sales actually dipped a bit this year in Dallas.

Here’s how that breaks down visually.

As you can see, the $4 million difference in sales between this year and last is fairly negligible — a drop of just .5 percent. But, following last year’s almost eight percent jump of more than $56 million, it is a little surprising. We’re not yet sure what to attribute this to — more bars of note opening up in the suburbs, maybe? — but we’re definitely going to spend some time pondering it, and we’re open to hearing your thoughts on the change (or lack thereof), too.

Over a beer, no doubt. And in a bar probably. Because, hey, we’re nothing if not a reflection of the things we report on.

Cover image by Kathy Tran.

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