As casual chains crumble, Chili’s endures. Here’s how the restaurant got its groove back.

The bartender drops off my chips and salsa without a word, though if he were listening closely, he might have heard me sigh at the sight of the appetizer. Designed as the opener for the new 3 for Lunch combo at Chili’s Grill & Bar, the basket comes loaded with tortilla chips - and with a promise to refill the trough as many times as I’d like before and after my main course arrives.

Staring at a replay of an NFL game, I feel as if I’m hosting my own Super Bowl party right there at the bar. Unfortunately, on this particular Wednesday afternoon in Alexandria, Va., I’m a party of one, barely able to scale this mountain of chips. My meal hasn’t even started and I’m already stressing about food waste.

At $10.99, the lunch combo is the latest enticement to woo diners back to Chili’s, the Texas-based chain that, no matter the vagaries of the casual dining marketplace, has always had its loyalists. It’s the place that kids love. The company that insists “fun” be part of its operating philosophy. The chain that made the rare crossover into pop culture with a song about - of all things - baby back ribs. The restaurant that is, and perhaps always will be, a “comforting beacon of exactly-good-enough.”

But times are tough in the hospitality orbit. Talk to just about any independent owner who ran a restaurant before 2020, and they’ll tell you sales haven’t recovered since the pandemic. It hasn’t been so hot for the big boys in casual dining, either. Sales at chains such as Olive Garden, Applebee’s and Red Lobster have been stagnant or slumping. The companies have, for a variety of reasons, also closed numerous locations and, in the case of Red Lobster, filed for bankruptcy. The entire sector still has fewer stores than it did before the pandemic.

Chili’s, however, has bucked the trend.

If you follow food industry news, perhaps you’ve seen the stories that have trumpeted the chain’s return to form. Restaurant Business, an online industry magazine, offered an explainer earlier this month: “How a summer of bold marketing fueled a comeback at Chili’s.” CNBC followed up with its own take: “Here’s how Chili’s made a comeback.” But even if you don’t read the news, you might have noticed the recent spate of Chili’s commercials, starting in 2023. They were part of the company’s first national advertising campaign in three years, a spokeswoman says.

How Chili’s got its groove back, it seems, is not by leaning into the kind of veg-forward, cross-cultural, farm-to-market, sustainably-sourced trends that attract diners to full-service, sit-down restaurants in America’s major cities. Instead, Chili’s has gone in the opposite direction: The chain is chasing after lower-income customers who have given up on restaurants after discovering what inflation has done to their discretionary income.

Employing a variety of weapons - advertising, social media, influencers, a nostalgic video game - Chili’s has put fast-food squarely in its crosshairs.

In one commercial, a voice-over wonders how Chili’s can offer a $10.99 3 for Me combo meal when fast food is so expensive. “Could be because we don’t have to pay for any mascots,” an employee shrugs, as a mustachioed chile pepper mascot beats on the restaurant’s window, begging for a job. Chili’s has even updated the ‘80s-era arcade game BurgerTime - as a promotional vehicle for its Big Smasher burger - with a storyline that challenges users to “defeat the evil fast food syndicate.”

In a battle for consumers’ increasingly limited dining dollars, Chili’s isn’t just promoting value meals to Americans hungry for them; it’s mocking the competition in the process. The chain’s strongest asset is its sense of humor, with a secondary side of snark, a combination that has proven effective ever since Wendy’s went on the offensive on Twitter (now X) several years back. A scroll through the company’s TikTok account gives you a sense of how Chili’s rolls: It invokes brat summer, mogging (ask your kids), “Lady and the Tramp” and competitive eating champ Joey Chestnut, who winces at the thought of “bottomless” chips and salsa.

Chili’s has challenged fast-food chains to a game of Value Meals, even though the company is in a whole different weight class than McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King. I suspect many of the challengers feel blindsided by the move, but it’s wicked smart. As with all corporate maneuverings, credit goes to the top dog: Kevin Hochman, president and chief executive of Brinker International, the parent company of Chili’s. Hochman is also president of Chili’s. He’s been in charge for only a couple of years.

Value is, of course, a tricky thing. We all know it’s in the eye of the beholder. I may value a 15-course tasting menu composed of single bites. The next person might consider it a total rip-off and head to the nearest McDonald’s to satisfy a hunger that lingers after this comic procession of self-important plates. Some folks, in other words, value the thrill of the new and unknown. Others value familiar flavors and gut-busting volume. Neither is more important than the other.

The bottomless chips and salsa trades on a volume that can be measured only by the size of your appetite. Mine was set to medium, and it had little desire to be drowned in a sea of watery salsa whose main characteristic was its ability to offend no one.

My engine was revving for the main course: the new Big Smasher burger, whose 7.5-ounce patty has, as Chili’s likes to boast, twice the beef of a Big Mac. The smash burger is cooked in a special clamshell griddle that leaves a hard crust on both sides of the patty. You savor the crustiness - and the good, fatty, Maillard-enhanced flavors it imparts - even when the patty is layered with lettuce, pickles, diced red onions, Thousand Island dressing and American cheese. It’s a burger that knows how to use technology to its benefit. I’d easily pony up for this sucker again.

The previous night, a friend and I dined at a Chili’s location in Linthicum Heights, Md., not far from Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. The restaurant parking lot was so packed, I feared we’d have to wait for a table, like in the old days at the original Chili’s in Dallas. My fears were unfounded.

We slipped into a comfy booth near the bar and a wall of flat-screen TVs. Personally, I was studying a different wall: one covered with 10 square frames, four of them outfitted with 12-inch records or album covers. The metaphor was right there for the taking: If vinyl could make a comeback, so could Chili’s.

We ordered as much food as two people could without looking like we were trying to punk the place: a Don Julio® Marg (yes, that’s its name), a Heineken 0.0, a half rack of baby back ribs (Boyz II Men has resurrected the jingle, by the way, with a version that sounds like a romantic plea), some fajitas (still trading on the sizzle spectacle), a Triple Dipper appetizer plate (with sliders, southwestern egg rolls and Nashville hot fried mozzarella) and a skillet chocolate chip cookie for dessert (calorie count: 1230).

Here and there, we could find fault with the drinks and dishes - the margarita was too sweet, the egg rolls undercooked, the mozzarella squares swimming in oil - but frankly, nitpicking the food at a corporate chain felt a little gross. Like you’re criticizing a junior college football team because they’re not the Kansas City Chiefs. The point here is not creativity, not ingredient quality and not white-tablecloth polish. It’s serving you food good enough - and easy enough on your wallet - so that you don’t have to think about either for an hour or two.

That’s a complicated calculation, which involves hundreds of moving parts, each one required to operate smoothly hundreds of times a day. Chili’s may have some fine tuning to do on the operational side, but it has apparently discovered the bliss point at which cheap food (or cheaper food) doesn’t automatically lead to a compromised meal. I, for instance, ate every one of my baby back ribs - each bone encrusted with char and slathered in barbecue sauce - and happily sang the jingle to myself as I walked out the door.