Houston Strategies

Houston tops manufacturing and fine dining

Houston placed very nicely in a couple lists I came across this weekend. First, in Industry Week magazine, Houston was ranked #1 in the Southwest for manufacturing with 222,477 jobs, well ahead of all competitors, even if you combine Dallas and Fort Worth.

When it comes to ranking southwestern U.S. cities by the number of their manufacturing jobs, the "Big D" must yield to Houston for No. 1. Manufacturing employment in Houston totals 222,477, nearly twice the 121,073 manufacturing jobs in Dallas, according to data assembled by Manufacturers' New Inc., an Evanston, Ill.-based directory publisher.

1. Houston (222,477 manufacturing jobs)
2. Dallas (121,073)
3. Fort Worth (67,707)
4. San Antonio (52,261)
5. ...
   

So we're not only the Greenest City in the Southwest, we're also the Industrial Capital of the Southwest.

The second was a short list in this weekend's Wall Street Journal of Zagat "Power Scene" restaurants in a selection of 10 cities, with their "high-profile clientele and high food ratings." Mark's American Cuisine in Houston not only tied several restaurants on the list with the top score of 28 out of 30, but it did it at a much lower cost than any other city on the list. I don't consider $55 to be a cheap meal by any means, but it is compared to the other places on this list. As I've mentioned before (twice), Houston is an amazing restaurant town. According to Zagat, we eat out much more often and at a lower average price than the rest of the nation.

Dining Out More, For Less: Perhaps the most impressive finding from Texas-area Zagat surveyors is the fact that Texans in Austin, Dallas/Ft. Worth and Houston dine out more frequently than denizens of any other major U.S. city–and by a large margin. Zagat Survey results show diners in Austin and Dallas/Ft. Worth average 4.0 meals out per week–25% more than the national average of 3.2 meals per week–while diners in Houston (4.2 times per week) beat the national average by over 30%. By comparison, Bostonians dine out a mere 2.7 times per week and New Yorkers 3.4 times per week. In addition, the average cost of a Texas meal is $28.67, well below the national average of $32.06.

posted by Tory Gattis @ 7:04 AM