JW Marriott Austin Tops 2025 Alcohol Sales in City

A drink is seen on a bar in front of rows of liquor.

Austin is known for its nightlife and bar scene. It’s a top destination for bachelor and bachelorette parties, and there’s a live band playing in a bar every night in the self-proclaimed Live Music Capital of the World. But while the opportunities to drink in bars seem limitless, the top seller of alcohol in Austin isn’t really a bar. It’s a hotel.

The JW Marriott Austin is the city’s top seller of alcohol so far this year, according to an American-Statesman analysis of alcohol sales tax receipts. Through the end of September, the luxury hotel sold $12.4 million of alcohol. The JW Marriott boasts seven different bars, including Edge Rooftop Bar. It also sells alcohol through banquets, conventions and private events. With more than 1,000 rooms and a steady stream of convention traffic, the hotel’s scale dwarfs most standalone bars.

Texas requires all people, organizations and businesses that sell, prepare or serve mixed beverages to pay a tax on their total sales. This does not include liquor stores or gas stations. The mixed beverage gross receipts tax is 6.7% of the business’s gross receipts from beer, wine and liquor. These figures are publicly available and updated monthly.

City-wide alcohol sales have been declining since 2022, but the Statesman analysis found the biggest sellers still brought in millions of dollars each this year.

Here’s the full list of the top 10 sellers and their total sales:

Coming in at No. 2 is Ojos Locos Sports Cantina, which has two Austin locations. The north location in particular is a sales powerhouse. The restaurant’s website says it was “designed to cater to the Latino,” and its focus on watch parties and major sporting events draws crowds that stay for hours – and spend accordingly.

Another Marriott property cracked the top 10, too.

The WLS Beverage Company at 304 East Cesar Chavez St., No. 8 on the list, is the licensing name for the Austin Marriott Downtown. WLS stands for White Lodging Services, a hospitality company that owns nine hotels in Austin including the JW Marriott Austin, and manages three more hotels along with 10 restaurants and five rooftop bars. That means two of the city’s biggest alcohol sellers fall under the same corporate umbrella, underscoring how downtown hotels dominate Austin’s high-dollar drinking scene.

Five of the top sellers are located downtown, an area packed with hotels, convention centers and high-traffic entertainment districts like Sixth Street and Rainey Street. Tourism traffic and major events mean downtown bars and hotels often serve visitors who spend more per drink than locals.

Top sellers were in a league of their own, earning millions more than most businesses, many of which didn’t crack $1 million. That doesn’t necessarily mean smaller bars are less popular. Many offer lower drink prices, operate in tighter spaces or keep shorter hours. Mixed beverage receipts filed with the Texas comptroller show only how much money was spent — not how many patrons came through the door or even how many drinks they bought.

There are a few local spots that did compete in sales, though. Matt’s El Rancho is the No. 4 top seller in the city. De Nada Cantina on East Cesar Chavez and Buford’s on West Sixth Street didn’t make the top 10, but raked in almost $4.3 million and $3.6 million in sales, respectively.