Despite Dip, Olive Garden Stays on Top

Fayetteville’s Top 10 Restaurants
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The Olive Garden remained Fayetteville’s No. 1 restaurant in gross sales for 2004 even though its numbers were down slightly from 2003.

Olive Garden, which opened in the CMN Business Park in December 2002, had sales of $3.96 million last year, down 3.1 percent from $4.09 million in 2003, which was an all-time sales record for a Fayetteville restaurant.

New restaurants usually have a “honeymoon” period of booming sales for about four months after opening. That may account for the difference between 2003 and 2004 sales for Olive Garden, which is owned by Darden Restaurants Inc. of Orlando, Fla. Fayetteville residents had begged Darden for an Olive Garden for years before the company finally built one on the city’s north side.

The 2004 fiscal year for Fayetteville’s hotel-motel-restaurant tax collections, which were used for this article, goes from December 2003 through November 2004. The numbers are based on food sales and don’t include alcohol sales.

Red Lobster, which is also owned by Darden, was No. 2 in Fayetteville for the second year in a row. The seafood restaurant’s sales dipped 4.6 percent to $3.59 million last year from $3.76 million the year before that.

Chili’s, which is a chain restaurant owned by Dallas-based Brinker International, came in at No. 3 with $3.07 million in sales, a 4.2 percent increase over $2.94 million in 2003.

Jose Inc., the top locally owned restaurant, was No. 4 with $2.75 million, up 2.4 percent from $2.69 million in 2003. In last year’s numbers, Jose Inc. included two restaurants under one roof: Jose’s Mexican Restaurant and Bordino’s, an Italian eatery. They were included as one business in our list because they pay city taxes as one business and are located in the same building.

Joe Fennel sold Jose’s Mexican Restaurant to Neal Crawford in November but Fennel remains owner of Bordino’s. So the two restaurants will likely be reported as two separate businesses in the city’s 2005 tax records. When restaurant owners comingled sales from two separate restaurants at different locations, we listed those eateries as separate businesses (such as Penguin Ed’s BBQ and Noodle’s/Bizy’s Café).

New to this year’s list were: Golden Corral, which opened in May and had $2.46 million in sales, landing it in the No. 6 spot; and Ruby Tuesday, which opened in October 2003 and had $1.99 million in sales.

Two McDonald’s restaurants made the top 10 list. The Joyce Boulevard location was No. 7 with $2.22 million in sales, up 15.3 percent from $1.99 million in 2003. The Sixth Street location was No. 9 with $2.08 million in sales, up 33.3 percent from $1.56 million in 2003.

Applebee’s, Shogun and Colton’s Steakhouse were bumped out of the top 10 this year by the competition.