What sort of deals will pull restaurant customers out of their homes? An increasing number of full-service chains are betting they’ve found the answer at the bar.
With inflation leaving little latitude for deep food discounts, brands ranging from Chili’s to Razzoo’s are taking a cleaver to their alcoholic beverage prices. One by one, they’re sacrificing a sliver of their best margins to entice bargain hunters with a big score.
Often, the first step is throwing away the clock. Selected Chili’s units, for instance, are dropping the price of 16-ounce draft beers to $3 during happy hour. Others are offering 2-for-1 deals during that traditional discounting window. What they share in common is keeping that window open all day. Happy hour for the restaurants now run from opening to closing.
Buffalo Wild Wings hasn’t stretched its happy hour that far, but the tag is still a misnomer; its $3 drafts, $4 Long Island iced teas and $5 margaritas are available for five hours daily, from 3 to 8 p.m.
TGI Friday’s went all the way with its happy hour revamp in March. All day, such signatures of the chain as a tequila sunrise and a bloody Mary are $4. A six-ounce wine is $5 and 12-ounce drafts are $2.
O’Charley’s, a recent addition to the wave, has redefined its happy hour as a 4 to 7 p.m. stretch during weekdays and a 3 to 6 p.m. run on Sundays. During those timeframes, drafts of domestic draft beer drop to $3, craft beers fall to $4, glasses of wine go for the same, and cocktails are $5.
Razzoo’s Cajun Café is scrapping the limits on its happy hour. That means all-day domestic draft beers for $3, wine for $5 a glass and frozen margaritas for $5.
“While prices continue to rise, Razzoo's gives their guests the opportunity to stretch their dollar daily,” the 22-unit chain said in announcing the new program last week.
BJ’s Restaurants offers a daily happy hour from 3 to 7, and the discounts resume after 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday. There’s also an exception: When a pro football game is on the flatscreen TVs that abound in the casual concept, all bottled domestic beers drop to $3 each.
The Bombshells breastaurant chain has a long happy hour. During the 11-to-7 stretch, it features selected 16-ounce drafts for just $2.50 and a 23-ounce serving of premium draft for $3.50. But fear not if you miss the official happy hour; shots of Fireball-flavored whiskey are $3 all day.
Tilted Kilt, another player in that sub-segment, features a daily drink special in lieu of happy hours. On Thursday, for instance, cocktails made with well-known brands like Jack Daniels, Captain Morgan or Tito’s are priced at $4, or about a third off the regular cost.
It’s easy for patrons who keep a tight hold on their bar tabs to learn about the new deals. Online guides to the discounts abound. They include such sites as happy-hours-menus.com, thehappyhourfinder.com and kingofhappyhour.com.
The federal government supplies some of the why’s for the deep discounting of alcoholic beverages. During September, the wholesale price of ready-to-sell foods rose by 1.2%, helping to drive up the Producer Price Index up by 0.4% after ebbing 0.2% and 0.4% in August and July, respectively, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Alcoholic beverages, in contrast, rose in price by just 0.1%.