Olive Garden Breaks Sales Record

In its first full year of operation, the Olive Garden restaurant in CMN Business Park broke Fayetteville’s all-time annual sales record in fiscal 2003 with $4.1 million in gross sales. The fiscal year goes from December 2002 through November 2003, according to city sales tax collections.

Red Lobster, which has been Fayetteville’s No. 1 restaurant for the past couple of years, fell to No. 2 with $3.8 million in sales. That’s a 0.6 percent decrease from 2002 for Red Lobster, which may have lost some customers to the nearby Olive Garden. Either way, Darden Restaurants Inc. of Orlando, Fla., came out the winner because the company owns both eateries.

Olive Garden’s entry at No. 1 pushed every other restaurant down a spot. Chili’s fell to No. 3 with $2.9 million in sales, a 2.1 percent increase. Jose Inc., which includes Jose’s Mexican Restaurant and Bordino’s in the same building, fell to No. 4 with $2.7 million in sales, a 6.6 percent decline from 2002. Jose Inc., owned by Joe Fennel, is the top-grossing locally owned restaurant in the city.

Shorty Small’s, which closed in October, Ozark Brewing Co. and Powerhouse Seafood dropped out of the top 10 list this year.

New entries in the list include Shogun at No. 9, with $1.8 million in sales, a 20.1 percent increase from 2002; and Colton’s Steakhouse at No. 10 with $1.7 million in sales. Colton’s opened in August 2002, so its 2003 sales can’t be compared with the full 12 months of 2002.

Copeland’s Famous New Orleans Restaurant in Rogers led in Northwest Arkansas, and probably the whole state, with $5.3 million in sales last year, according to the restaurant owners. Rogers doesn’t have a sales tax that applies specifically to restaurants, so it’s impossible to rank all of the city’s eateries.

TAB CHART

Top 10 Restaurants

		2003	2002	percentage
Rank	Restaurant	sales	sales	change
1	Olive Garden	$4,089,853	NA	NA
2	Red Lobster	$3,764,035	$3,787,900	-0.6%
3	Chili’s	$2,943,472	$2,881,628	2.1%
4	Jose Inc.*	$2,689,450	$2,878,900	-6.6%
5	Ryan’s Family Steak House	$2,595,964	$2,439,718	6.4%
6	Chick-Fil-A (Northwest Village)	$2,230,038	$1,992,	11.9%
7	Applebee’s	$1,936,762	1,928,815	0.4%
8	McDonald’s (Joyce Blvd.)	$1,929,804	$1,830,200	5.4%
9	Shogun	$1,791,200	$1,491,682	20.1%
10	Colton’s Steakhouse**	$1,727,300	$711,400	NA

*Jose Inc. includes Jose’s Mexican restaurant and Bordino’s. Both restaurants are located under one roof, so we are including them as one restaurant complex. In other cases, when restaurants have two separate locations, we count those as two spearate restaurants. **Colton’s Steakhouse opened in August 2002, so 2002 sales are for only four months of that year, skewing the percentage-change category for that restaurant.

NA – Not available

Source: Fayetteville hotel-motel-restaurant tax payments.

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