6 Chain Restaurants With Overpriced Cocktails, According To Customers

Going out to eat can be a joyous occasion because you spare yourself the effort of whipping up a meal from scratch. Additionally, it can be nice to be doted on, take a breather, and enjoy some good food and drinks. Ordering a cocktail might be the perfect complement to your meal, but your dining experience can take a turn for the worse when you reach for the bill. 

Some chain restaurants serve particularly expensive cocktails that have many customers scratching their heads and generally feeling displeased. If you want to learn about which spots serve overpriced cocktails, we've compiled the worst offenders, according to customers. While expense is subjective, we found certain eateries that have gotten a lot of flak for their cocktail pricing; complaints touch on high costs and poorly made or weak drinks that are arguably not worth the money. Spare yourself some dough, and discover which places you might want to avoid ordering cocktails at.

You might head to The Cheesecake Factory for its array of flavorful appetizers or its colorful selection of cheesecake slices. It also has a pretty iconic pasta menu, so you may want a cocktail to round out your meal with some type of liquid. The cocktails lure you in with beautiful presentation, but you may be a bit surprised at the high cost. Some customers say there are no prices listed on the cocktail menu, so it was a shock for them to see the price of their mojito on the bill. 

"A bit steep for one cocktail it's not like this place is fancy!" writes one Tripadvisor reviewer. Another customer shares that their old fashioned cost more than their food, which they thought was "so ridiculous." They then reiterate that the menu did not list a price at the time of ordering, and write, "Water for me next time!!!" Plenty of others have called out the cocktail prices on social media, with one person saying it felt like a splurge to order drinks with their meal. 

Clearly, customers are not pleased with The Cheesecake Factory's cocktail prices, so you might save some noticeable dough if you forgo the beverages altogether. That way, you can focus on the great flavors in your dish of choice.

Chili's has some pretty great food offers, but the cocktails seem to be hit or miss. Someone on Reddit, who asked why the Chili's drink menu didn't list prices, garnered hundreds of comments with insights and commentary. In the thread, one person jokes that the chain does it because the price goes up weekly, while others chime in and say it's done because customers might not want to order the cocktail if they saw the premium pricing. "If you knew the prices, you wouldn't go," another Redditor quips. 

Some customers say that you have to come in time for happy hour to make the most of the more cost-effective pricing. But other Chili's patrons talk about quality issues with the overpriced cocktails in their online reviews. In another Reddit thread, one person calls the drinks weak and claims that they mostly taste like juice; they also note that the drink quality in general has declined at the chain, and they were left wondering whether they needed to order an extra shot. This only makes a given cocktail even more expensive, of course, and others have backed up this experience of varying cocktail quality and lack of strength. On Tripadvisor, one person notes that they ordered a margarita for what they thought was a good value, but the drink was bad, way too sugary, and had virtually no alcohol taste. 

If you're paying for a cocktail, you want it to taste as advertised. Anything less is an expensive blunder.

You can find plenty of tasty menu items at Applebee's, whether you're in the mood for mozzarella sticks or boneless wings. While your mouth might be on fire from downing Buffalo wings, you may want to reconsider ordering a cocktail to wash them down. Because you'll pay for it, literally. Customers say the alcoholic drink selection is expensive, with some noting that it was a contributing factor in why their experience at the restaurant was so poor. 

"The cocktail I ordered was as weak as the atmosphere," states one Tripadvisor reviewer, who goes on to say that the cost of the food and cocktails was not worth the final bill. You might want to just skip the drinks menu altogether, but the overpriced cocktail experience has become enough for some customers to avoid the restaurant as a whole. Not just that, but another reviewer complains that their drink was so heavy-handed with the mix-ins that it tasted like a cordial without much alcohol flavor. 

These types of reviews come from all over the country, from Northern California to Florida, so the pricing issues certainly seem widespread across the chain. Diners speak up about how they're paying high costs without getting a premium experience, so that math doesn't work in Applebee's favor here.

P.F. Chang's started out serving Chinese food, but now it has an array of dishes on its menu. Various cocktails are among those menu items, with options like a matcha-based martini and the Asian pear mojito. However, the high price of its cocktails has been a point of discussion on sites like Tripadvisor for over a decade. Some patrons don't think the drinks are merely overpriced, but that they are out-of-this-world expensive. Others say the cocktails are very pricey and took up a big bulk of their bill; on top of that, one person's server reportedly rang up the highest-priced vodka for their cocktail, rather than asking or opting for a well option. Overall, this resulted in an unpleasant and expensive dining experience for the customer. 

"PF Ca-Ching, overpriced + underportioned," says one comment on a Facebook post about the chain's wine and cocktails. P.F. Chang's certainly has some tasty cocktail options that people enjoy, but you'll just want to remember that patrons tend to take issue with the cost. According to some customers, it may be better to skip the cocktails if you want to avoid watered-down, pricey sippers.

Admittedly, some people might not have ever crossed paths with a Bahama Breeze Island Grille location, a restaurant chain mainly concentrated in Florida with a sole outlier in South Carolina. Despite being a smaller chain, that doesn't stop customers from venting about the cost of the alcoholic beverages. The complaints we found for Bahama Breeze claim that the drinks are just glorified sparkling water and therefore aren't worth the purchase. 

While some folks actually like the alcoholic libations, they still think the cost is high for what you get, a sentiment you can find mentioned multiple times in online reviews. Others have said that they were annoyed at the price for what they got, with one person saying they received a cocktail that was way too sweet to enjoy. The reviews seem to span a couple of major issues (from overall food quality to general lack of hospitality), but many problems all point back to the price and quality of the cocktails. If you find yourself at Bahama Breeze, rethink ordering a cocktail.

It's hard to deny a place is expensive if the complaints have been piling up online for 15 years and counting. Unfortunately for Yard House, people have had major gripes about the alcoholic beverages and even the happy hour pricing since at least 2011, so that's not a great sign for the chain. Customer reviews in 2026 still complain that the overall pricing for food and cocktails is far too expensive or that the drinks are costly and small to boot. Others say that even the well cocktail they ordered seemed too steep, which played a major part in why they didn't feel very compelled to return. And generally, well drinks are meant to be among the cheaper offerings thanks to the lower-end, bottom-shelf alcohols used. 

Over on Yelp, some customers have said that the flavored martini totally wasn't worth the price, while one person reports being charged for a pricier margarita than they ordered. If you really want a drink, it may help to only visit during happy hour — this spot is known for having a pretty solid happy hour compared to chains like The Cheesecake Factory — but that doesn't stop some customers from calling that out as pricey, too. Yard House's cocktails may burn a hole through your wallet.

We compiled insights from reviews on Tripadvisor, Yelp, and other social media platforms, where people discussed their experiences with the above chains. It was important that complaints about overpriced and underwhelming drinks were repeated by various people rather than being a one-time issue. We omitted mentioning specific prices since this varies per location and tends to change each year. Each of these chains has a fair number of complaints about cocktails and various mixed drinks, as described by the customers. Most issues centered on the high price of the cocktail, but some were more esoteric and talked about the drinks not being worth it based on the bad taste (whether it was too watery or too juice-forward).