NORTH MYRTLE BEACH — When a celebrity-branded steakhouse with a Wine Spectator award and 225 feet of dock space says it can no longer make the numbers work on the Intracoastal Waterway, the problem is bigger than one restaurant.
Greg Norman Australian Grille announced on September 1 that it will permanently close, with its final day of service set for October 15, 2026 [Post and Courier, 2026]. The restaurant made the announcement in a social media post, and said all outstanding gift cards will be honored through the final day, with refunds available for customers who cannot get in before the closure [WPDE, 2026]. This news is significant in light of the broader implications of Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing.
The company’s own explanation is worth reading carefully, because it is not the usual boilerplate about “new opportunities.” The statement pointed to the difficulty of running a premium food and beverage operation in a highly seasonal market, and called the location “no longer sustainable,” attributing the decision to the current business landscape rather than any lack of affection for the community. That is a business-conditions statement, and for Horry County residents it deserves more than a nostalgia post.
The closure of Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing reflects the challenges faced by many establishments in the area.
Understanding Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing
An Original Tenant, and Not an Obvious Casualty
The restaurant was established in 1999 and marketed itself as North Myrtle Beach’s premier steak and seafood house, with a wine list that carried the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for close to two decades and a bourbon and tequila collection exceeding 180 bottles [Yelp business listing, 2026]. It was one of the anchors of Barefoot Landing before Barefoot Landing became what it is today.
It also was not a property Norman was looking to shed. The closing comes roughly five years after Norman announced he was scaling down a $400 million business portfolio to concentrate on LIV Golf — and at the time, his communications director said the Australian Grille was one of his favorite businesses and one he intended to keep operating through that downsizing [Post and Courier, 2026]. Norman’s family enterprises remain active locally through Shark Wave Park in North Myrtle Beach.
That history matters to the analysis. This was not a struggling operator with thin capitalization, a bad lease, or an absentee brand looking for an exit. It was a well-known, well-reviewed, waterfront fine-dining room owned by someone who wanted to keep it. When that business closes, the reasonable conclusion is that the underlying economics changed, not that management failed. So what changed?
The Seasonality Problem Is a Math Problem
The phrase “highly seasonal market” does a lot of work in that statement, and it describes something residents of the north end understand better than anyone.
North Myrtle Beach city officials have long described a community that goes from roughly 16,000 year-round residents to about 100,000 people a day during summer months [WBTW, 2019]. The city’s year-round population has grown since then, but the shape of the curve has not: a fine-dining room at Barefoot Landing must earn most of its annual revenue in a compressed window while carrying a full-service kitchen, a large wine and spirits inventory, a private dining room, and a trained front-of-house staff for twelve months.
Fine dining is the format least able to absorb that. A high-volume casual concept can flex its labor down and its menu simple in February. A steakhouse holding a 180-bottle bourbon program and a Wine Spectator-caliber cellar has capital sitting on shelves year-round and a service model that does not survive being staffed thin. That is the structural vulnerability the company is naming, and it is one every serious operator on the Grand Strand is doing arithmetic on right now.
Seasonality alone, however, is not new. It has been the defining condition of this market for a century. What has changed is the cost side.
Costs Moved, and Steak Moved Most
The national numbers are stark, and they land hardest on exactly this kind of restaurant.
Food costs ended 2025 running 38 percent above 2019 levels, labor costs rose 35 percent over the same period, 42 percent of operators reported being unprofitable in 2025, and six in ten reported year-over-year declines in customer traffic [QSR Magazine, 2026]. Roughly 90 percent of full-service operators responded by raising menu prices [QSR Magazine, 2026] — which, in a value-sensitive vacation market, is a strategy with a short runway.
Beef is the specific knife. The USDA has estimated beef prices climbing about 10.1 percent in 2026, with a forecast range running as high as 18.3 percent, driven by a cattle inventory at a 75-year low after years of drought, high interest rates, and rising production costs — with herd numbers not expected to recover until at least 2028 [Fortune, 2026]. Federal forecasters also project restaurant and foodservice prices rising 3.6 percent in 2026, outpacing the 2.4 percent increase expected at grocery stores [Feed & Grain, 2026].
Put those together and you get the squeeze in plain terms. A steakhouse’s signature product is the input rising fastest. Its customers are simultaneously being nudged toward buying that same product at the grocery store, where it is cheaper. And it can only sell that product at full margin for about four months a year.
Cost pressure explains why the margin narrowed. It does not by itself explain why this particular room emptied. For that, you have to look about 200 yards down the boardwalk.
The Competition Arrived — and It Was Built by the Landlord
Barefoot Landing has been deliberately remade around the Australian Grille over the past eight years, and the new construction was aimed at a different customer.
In 2017, Burroughs & Chapin announced Dockside Village, a walkable waterfront restaurant district for the Intracoastal side of the property; the build-out added a stage, outdoor event space, a playground, revamped facades and walkways, 20 finger docks, and five new anchor tenants [Barefoot Landing, 2024]. Lucy Buffett’s LuLu’s opened first in June 2018 [VacationMyrtleBeach, 2024]. Crooked Hammock Brewery followed in 2021 through La Vida Hospitality [MyHorryNews, 2023]. Big Chill Island House then opened with 370 seats, a rooftop bar, and Intracoastal views [MyrtleBeach.com, 2024].
The Post and Courier explicitly identifies competition from those neighboring waterfront additions — LuLu’s, Taco Mundo, and Big Chill Island House — as part of the Grille’s changed environment [Post and Courier, 2026].
Here is the original analysis Horry County residents should take from this: the waterfront view stopped being a differentiator. In 1999, an upscale room on the Intracoastal was scarce inventory, and diners paid a premium for the water. By 2026, the same landlord had surrounded that room with 370-seat rooftops, free boat docking, sunset celebrations, and live music — all selling the identical view at a lower check average with a broader menu and a family-friendly door policy.
Barefoot Landing did not fail its tenant. It succeeded at repositioning the entire property toward high-volume, casual, experience-driven dining. That strategy is defensible, and it draws crowds. But it also commoditized the one asset the Australian Grille had been charging a premium for, and the premium format was the one with the least room to cut.
The market signal is not “fine dining is dead here.” Note that Ocean Blue Prime Steak House is scheduled to open at The Market Common in mid-fall 2026 [The Sun News, 2026] — an upscale steakhouse betting on a location surrounded by year-round residents rather than seasonal foot traffic. Location strategy, not concept, appears to be the dividing line.
Why This Should Matter to Every Horry County Taxpayer
Residents who never ate at the Grille still have a stake in this, and the reason is the county’s revenue structure.
The Horry County Hospitality Fee generated approximately $59.3 million in 2024, and the county collected $31.2 million in accommodations taxes that year — roughly 30 percent of South Carolina’s statewide total [Myrtle Beach Area CVB, 2025]. Prepared food and beverage sales feed that stream directly. Every closed dining room is a permanent subtraction from it.
And that stream is already softening. Visit Myrtle Beach and the Chamber reported city occupancy down 3.3 percent in the third quarter of 2025 against 2024, with leaders attributing decreased occupancy and tax revenue in part to overall price increases — and forecasting mild demand declines for mid-scale, economy, and independent hotels in 2026 [Spectrum News, 2026].
When visitor-driven revenue softens, the shortfall does not vanish. It moves onto the property tax roll. This publication has previously reported that North Myrtle Beach’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget contemplated a property tax increase for the first time in years [MyrtleBeachSC News, 2026]. A closing on the scale of the Australian Grille — a full-service kitchen, bar, and private dining operation employing a substantial year-round staff — is not just a lost dinner reservation. It is lost hospitality fee collections, lost wages circulating locally, and lost payroll in a county where tourism supports an estimated 82,000 jobs [Tourism Works for the Grand Strand, 2025].
The Bottom Line
Greg Norman Australian Grille is not closing because North Myrtle Beach stopped loving it. It is closing because a premium, four-month revenue model collided with record beef costs, a decade of cost inflation, price-fatigued customers, and a landlord’s successful decision to fill the surrounding waterfront with cheaper, louder, higher-volume competition selling the same sunset.
That combination is not unique to one restaurant. It is the operating condition for every high-cost, low-volume, seasonally dependent business on this coast. Residents should expect more announcements like this one — and should watch closely how city and county officials plan for a hospitality tax base that can no longer be assumed to grow every year.
The doors stay open until October 15. After that, the question for Horry County is not who takes the space. It is what the closing tells us about who can still afford to operate here.
Further Reading
Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing – Post and Courier — Greg Norman Australian Grille set to close after 27 years at Barefoot Landing: https://www.postandcourier.com/myrtle-beach/business/greg-norman-australian-grille-closing-north-myrtle-beach-sc/article_b9c7b34e-902c-4f34-9cae-8a26e3950ff4.html
Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing – WPDE — ‘No longer sustainable’: Longtime North Myrtle Beach restaurant to close after 27 years: https://wpde.com/news/local/no-longer-sustainable-longtime-north-myrtle-beach-restaurant-to-close-after-27-years
Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing – QSR Magazine — Restaurant Industry to Hit $1.55 Trillion in 2026, But Guest Caution Remains: https://www.qsrmagazine.com/story/restaurant-industry-to-hit-1-55-trillion-in-2026-but-guest-caution-remains/
Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing – Fortune — Beef is becoming a luxury as prices stay at record highs: https://fortune.com/2026/04/22/beef-prices-record-high-wont-come-down-2028/
Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing – Feed & Grain — Food prices expected to rise 2.9% in 2026 as beef costs surge: https://www.feedandgrain.com/business-markets/news/15823231/food-prices-expected-to-rise-29-in-2026-as-beef-costs-surge
Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing – Barefoot Landing — Big Chill Island House Opens at Barefoot Landing / Dockside Village: https://www.bflanding.com/whats-new/barefoot-landings-summerfest-2-2
Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing – MyHorryNews — Big Chill to storm North Myrtle Beach: https://www.myhorrynews.com/news/new-2-story-restaurant-opening-in-north-myrtle-beach/article_86436366-92df-11ee-ac7c-dffb5e11dbdc.html
Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing – Spectrum News — Myrtle Beach tourism down 3% in 2025: https://spectrumlocalnews.com/sc/south-carolina/news/2026/02/09/myrtle-beach-tourism-decline
Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing – Myrtle Beach Area CVB — Industry Research: https://www.myrtlebeachareacvb.com/industry-research
Greg Norman’s Barefoot Landing Closing – MyrtleBeachSC News — Why North Myrtle Beach Has to Be a Tourist Town: https://myrtlebeachsc.com/why-north-myrtle-beach-has-to-be-a-tourist-town-the-season-that-pays-for-everything/
