Albuquerque’s South Valley is in line to become the city’s third Texas Roadhouse trade area, after a liquor license application filed with the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department on March 25, 2026 confirmed that the Kentucky-based steakhouse chain is targeting an empty land plot at 3800 Las Estancias SW, in front of the AMC Albuquerque 12 movie theater. Reported by the Albuquerque Journal on April 27, 2026, the move follows the brand’s recently disclosed plan to open roughly 20 new company restaurants in the United States this year.
The targeted parcel sits on Las Estancias Way, off Coors Boulevard, alongside Dion’s and Chili’s — a classic suburban casual-dining cluster anchored by a multiplex. The footprint and final restaurant prototype have not been disclosed, but the layout is consistent with the Texas Roadhouse 2026 development roadmap, which prioritizes high-traffic, retail-and-entertainment-adjacent pads with strong evening dayparts.
News of the project first surfaced when a photo of a liquor license notice for Texas Roadhouse Holdings LLC circulated in the Facebook group South Valley Pride earlier in April. The signage subsequently disappeared from the site, but spokesperson Andrea Brown of the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department confirmed to the Journal that the application is on file and pending preliminary approval.
“At this time, we cannot confirm the details for this location.”
That standard non-confirmation from corporate communications is consistent with how Texas Roadhouse typically handles new-site disclosures: liquor license filings precede public confirmation by several months, and groundbreaking usually follows once the license clears.
Adding 3800 Las Estancias SW would lift Albuquerque to three Texas Roadhouse locations, complementing existing stores on the city’s West Side near Cottonwood Mall and in the northeast quadrant near Cliff’s Amusement Park. Both existing restaurants sit roughly 20 to 30 minutes by car from the planned South Valley site — confirming the brand’s preference to avoid same-trade-area cannibalization.
Statewide, New Mexico currently has four Texas Roadhouse restaurants: two in Albuquerque, one in Las Cruces, and one in Santa Fe (which opened in September 2025). A fifth New Mexico location at the South Valley site would represent the chain’s most concentrated metro-level presence in the state and reinforce the broader pattern of 700-plus restaurants across 49 states driving incremental same-state density rather than entering new states.
The South Valley pre-development moves the needle for the chain’s full-year 2026 development plan, which targets approximately:
Liquor license filings like the one in New Mexico are an early but reliable read on which markets will land in this year’s company pipeline. With $5.88 billion in 2025 revenue and a confirmed strategy of buying back franchised restaurants rather than awarding new domestic franchise areas, virtually every new US Texas Roadhouse is expected to be company-operated.
The applicant of record on the New Mexico filing is Texas Roadhouse Holdings LLC, the company-owned development entity used for corporate restaurants. That detail aligns with what the parent company has communicated to investors via its May 7, 2026 Q1 earnings call calendar: domestic growth concentrated under direct corporate control, supported by a $400 million capex envelope.
Two days before the South Valley filing surfaced publicly, Texas Roadhouse opened its first standalone Seoul flagship in Jamsil via Korean master franchisee Hyundai Greenfood. Read together, the two announcements show how the brand splits its development model in 2026: every domestic new-build is corporate, while every international new-build runs through an existing master franchise partner.
For master franchise investors in Asia and MENA, the takeaway is twofold. First, casual-dining steakhouse pads adjacent to multiplexes — like the AMC Albuquerque 12 set-up — remain the highest-conviction site type the chain still pursues at home, which is a useful reference for site selection in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Ho Chi Minh City. Second, the absence of any new US franchise awards keeps non-US territories — where the brand still works through master franchisees — as the only remaining channel for new partners to enter the system. As liquor license filings continue to roll out city by city through Q2 and Q3, the South Valley site is a useful reminder that the casual-dining steakhouse format is still finding fresh territory inside one of the most franchised restaurant markets in the world.
Source: Albuquerque Journal — Texas Roadhouse planning South Valley location
