Next Time You Visit Texas Roadhouse, Listen For These Phrases — Servers Are Supposedly Required To Say Them

Popular chain restaurant Texas Roadhouse often attracts customers for its Southern-style meat dishes, such as steak and ribs. Employees who work for the chain can make pretty decent money, but they also say it's their job to serve up certain phrases to make the restaurant's dishes sound more appealing. This helps to "upsell" customers on various food and beverage orders. Roadhouse reportedly hires "secret shoppers" to stop into different restaurants and ensure the employees are following the script as expected.

This information comes from anonymous users on Reddit, who have revealed the various phrases (think: "legendary sides") they must use, as well as the idea of secret shoppers. While it can't be proven fact, as someone who has dined at Texas Roadhouse a handful of times, I can attest to hearing at least a few of these throughout my visits.

"Always ask if they want to try the hand-cut steaks or fall-off-the-bone ribs, fresh-baked bread, and made-from-scratch sides," one person wrote in a r/Serverlife Reddit thread, adding that phrases such as "smothered, loaded, and kickers (for margaritas)" are important, too. "You have to use buzz words like ice-cold beer, legendary margarita, hand-cut steaks, [and] made-from-scratch sides," someone in a separate r/Serverlife thread wrote about their own experience as a server. They add that it all "felt very scripted."

While the employees are trained to say these phrases, they're also monitored throughout their time as a server. Reddit users mentioned that Texas Roadhouse reportedly has people who go undercover to ensure servers follow best practices, adding that this is why it's so important to squeeze those key words and phrases in for every customer you serve.

"Secret shoppers come in twice a month, and if you got one bad shop, you got demoted to host," one person revealed on Reddit. Someone else doubled down on the demotion in a separate r/Serverlife thread: "I had a four-top that ended up being [secret shoppers], and although I was rated as very friendly and kept up with refills, I failed. ... Because of this, I'm being offered to be moved to the host stand for a month." The user noted that the main reason they failed the secret test was because they didn't use proper phrases such as "hand-cut steaks."

It seems that secret shoppers are a part of Texas Roadhouse's server experience across the board, and it's not uncommon. These secret shoppers generally come from outside third parties and are hired by the restaurant to assess everything from cleanliness to server quality. It's a way for big chains to keep an eye on individual restaurants, so next time you stop at Texas Roadhouse, listen to how they speak; they likely follow the rules since they don't know whether you're there to test them. They might sneak in other tactics, too, such as dancing.