While the fresh cinnamon butter rolls at Texas Roadhouse are legendary, their true claim to fame is in their wallet-friendly steaks. You’ll have a hard time finding anywhere that serves a full steak dinner on a budget like Texas Roadhouse — their prices seem almost too good to be true (a 6-ounce sirloin for $14.49?) If you’ve been wondering how they managed to pull this off, you wouldn’t be the first.
The secret, as expected, lies in their business model, which is laser-focused on one thing: plating steaks at the lowest possible cost. All the steaks at the restaurant are USDA Choice instead of the pricier Prime grade. All the chefs at the restaurant are trained to work with these cuts (and they also plate dozens, if not hundreds of these cuts a day), so they know exactly how to coax the most flavors out of these bargain cuts to give you the best dining experience possible for the money.
Texas Roadhouse’s behind-the-scenes strategies also play a big role. They sign long-term contracts with beef suppliers, which might cost them more upfront, but shield them from market swings. Even when beef prices spike, the restaurant is still guaranteed a consistent supply of affordable beef — these savings are passed onto you. But this is just one of the many “backroom factors” at play behind the price tag.
The secret lies in Texas Roadhouse’s business model
Upsale is a core tactic at Texas Roadhouse. When you dine there, you might notice how every Roadie would enthusiastically recommend tacking extras to your order, from their loaded baked potatoes to rattlesnake bites. While these add-ons seem modest — just a few dollars each — your $9.99 sirloin can quickly turn into a $20+ meal this way, which helps balance out the book on those cheap steak prices.
Their weird operating hours also play a role, too. Unlike many competitors who serve breakfast through dinner all week, Texas Roadhouse focuses solely on dinner service during weekdays, opening from 4 PM to 10 PM (though they do offer lunch on weekends). Dinner is their busiest and most profitable time, so by not doing breakfast or lunch, they save a ton on operating costs and rent.
Lastly, if you’re a frequent goer, you may notice how their menus don’t change a lot over the years. The same bone-in ribeye that we ate and raved about in our tasting test? It was on the menu a decade ago, and it’ll likely be there for the next. By sticking to their proven favorites rather than constantly creating new dishes or running promotional items, they spare their bottom line from marketing costs… costs that are used to offset the prices of the steak, instead. Never guessed there are so many moving parts behind the simple $9.99 sirloin, did you?
