Red Lobster Takes Over as Top Fayetteville Restaurant

For the first six months of 1998, Red Lobster took over as the highest-grossing restaurant in Fayetteville with $1.37 million in sales. Red Lobster replaces Jose’s Restaurant & Club, which ranked No. 1 in sales for both 1996 and 1997.

Jose’s had $1.28 million in sales for the first half of 1997 and $2.49 million for the entire year. Red Lobster had $2.34 million in sales for all of 1997.

Red Lobster’s sales jumped by 15.1 percent over the first six months of 1997. Jose’s 1998 sales increased by only 1.8 percent over the first half of 1997 for a total of $1.31 million.

“Business is up over last year considerably,” says Larry Sagar, general manager of the Fayetteville Red Lobster, “mainly because of the growth in Northwest Arkansas.”

Of the top 10 restaurants for the first half of the year, only three are locally owned: Jose’s Restaurant & Club, AQ Chicken House and Ozark Brewing Co. The rest are owned by chains and operated, in most cases, by local franchisees. In some cases, such as that of Red Lobster, the chain restaurants are owned and operated by the companies.

Joe Fennel owns three restaurants in his Dickson Street building. All three pay city sales taxes under the name Jose’s Restaurant & Club and Jose’s Bandito Club. The three eateries are: Jose’s Restaurant & Club, a Mexican restaurant; Bordino’s, an Italian eatery; and Jose’s Streetside, a sidewalk cafe. Since revenue from Fayetteville’s hotel-motel-restaurant tax is used to compute the sales figures, it’s impossible to split out the different eateries Fennel owns because of the bookkeeping method he uses to pay taxes to the city.

Fennel says it doesn’t bother him to be knocked out of the No. 1 spot. “That’s fine with me,” he says.

Rio Bravo Cantina, which opened last September, is ranked No. 3 for the first half year of 1998 with $1.4 million in sales. The restaurant set an all-time sales record for Fayetteville for its first month with $361,767 and led the city in sales for the first three months it was open.

“We’re very happy with Fayetteville. It’s treated us very well so far,” says Gerry Bowman, director of operations for Ozark Rio Inc., the franchise group that owns the Fayetteville restaurant and a Rio Bravo in Springfield, Mo.

Bowman says Ozark Rio expected to do $2.4 million to $2.5 million per year in Fayetteville, and the restaurant is in line with that projection. That’s a little less than the average of Rio Bravo’s 56 restaurants, which is about $2.8 million per year. The Springfield Rio Bravo does about $3 million in sales per year. The restaurants are usually located in metropolitan areas larger than Northwest Arkansas, he says.

“Usually, Rio Bravos don’t go into this size of market,” Bowman says of Fayetteville, “but we thought we’d give it a shot, and it’s paying off for us.”

The top 10 Fayetteville restaurants (and estimated sales figures) for the first six months of 1998 were:

1. Red Lobster, $1,376,793

2. Jose’s, $1,313,400

3. Rio Bravo Cantina, $1,250,873

4. Chili’s, $1,205,100

5. Ryan’s, $1,101,031

6. AQ Chicken House, $1,012,800

7. Applebee’s, $946,259

8. Ozark Brewing Co., $875,100

9. McDonald’s ’50s, $842,333

10. McDonald’s, $697,105

The new list knocks El Chico out of the top 10. El Chico, which had $1.44 million in sales for all of 1997, had $671,402 in sales for the first half of 1998.

During 1997, 30 restaurants opened in Fayetteville and 30 closed, resulting in no change for the city’s total of 185.

According to Chamber of Commerce officials, 21 restaurants opened in Fayetteville in the first half of 1998. They include: Art’s Place, Back Porch Bar-B-Q, Butcher Block Steakhouse, Caprice Restaurant, Charlie’s Chicken, Cheeburger Cheeburger, Costa Azul, Elenita’s, El Toro, Foxes Diner, Hog City Diner, Shiloh Espresso & Roastery, General Custard (at Locomotion), McDonald’s (on Crossover), Ozark Baking & Catering and two Taco Bells. Four new restaurants opened this year in Fayetteville’s Northwest Arkansas Mall: Lotus Express, Cajun Grill, Quizno’s Classic Subs and Sbarro. Some of the new Fayetteville eateries replaced others that closed in the same locations during the previous year.

Ten restaurants closed during the first half of 1998, including: Bud’s Bus Stop, Caprice Restaurant, Goood Stuff (with three “o”s in “good”), Northwest Port of Call, Pizza Hut (at Lokomotion), Rocco’s Spaghetti Kitchen, Rufino’s, Substation, Touche and Wide Spread Bagel.

Most of Fayetteville’s hotels also contain restaurants operated by the hotel management. Because of the way taxes are collected by the city, receipts for rooms and dining at the hotel aren’t kept separately, so it’s not possible to estimate here how much the restaurants alone brought in.

The city’s top-grossing hotels for the first half of 1998 were:

1. Hilton Hotel, $1,941,175

2. Clarion Inn, $1,700,440

3. Holiday Inn Express, $690,900

4. Best Western, $463,800

5. Fairfield Inn, $435,443 n