Yellow Rocket Restaurant Sales Soar in Central Arkansas

Restaurant food sales figures for 2014 are in, and in Little Rock the usual suspects — Chick-fil-A, Host International at the airport, Olive Garden — dominate.

But a closer look at some locally owned and popular restaurants reveals some interesting trends — like the following:

Yellow Rocket Concepts’ five restaurants — Big Orange West, Big Orange Midtown, Local Lime, ZaZa Little Rock and ZaZa Conway — reported almost $11 million in receipts last year, not including alcohol sales, making the group a central Arkansas restaurant juggernaut.

Whispers can’t make an apples-to-apples comparison between Yellow Rocket’s total 2014 and 2013 sales, however, because its biggest-selling restaurant, Big Orange Midtown, didn’t open until July 2013. In fact, if one doesn’t consider Big Orange a chain — yet — the outpost in Midtown was the top-selling nonchain restaurant in Little Rock.

And Yellow Rocket — a partnership consisting of Scott McGehee, John Beachboard and Russ McDonough — will have even more receipts to report this year, what with the recent opening of the Tap Room at Lost Forty Brewing in east Little Rock and the yet-to-open Heights Taco & Tamale, the new restaurant planned for the former location of Browning’s in the Heights.

*Opened July 2013

Sources: City of Little Rock and Pulse of Conway