Tilted Kilt

Tilted Kilt is a Celtic-themed sports bar and restaurant known for full-service dining, a lively bar, and wall-to-wall televised sports in a pub-style setting. The concept leans into Scottish and Irish imagery, with a focus on game-day viewing, after-work visits, and late-night traffic.

The brand began with a single pub in the Las Vegas market and formally launched as Tilted Kilt in 2003. Early growth came through franchising in Arizona, Nevada, and other Western markets, with operators often converting existing restaurant spaces into Tilted Kilt locations. At its peak in the mid‑2010s, the chain had more than 90 locations across the United States and Canada, which showed it could work in a range of trade areas, from highway pads and power centers to entertainment corridors.

In 2018, an affiliate of Arc Group, Inc. acquired the Tilted Kilt intellectual property and franchise rights, bringing the concept into a broader casual-dining portfolio. That transaction marked a shift toward tighter control of operations, more disciplined real estate decisions, and the potential for menu and cost structure updates under a multi-brand restaurant owner. Since then, the brand has focused less on rapid expansion and more on strengthening the units that remain open.

As of June 2024, Tilted Kilt is operating a much smaller store base than at its peak, with about 10 locations in a mix of franchised and company-influenced hands. The current footprint is spread across a handful of states and tends to favor busy suburban retail corridors, regional mall-adjacent parcels, casino and entertainment districts, and destination lifestyle centers with strong evening and weekend traffic. New openings are limited and typically occur when a franchisee can take over second‑generation casual-dining space rather than build from the ground up.

Over the last five years, Tilted Kilt has evolved from a high-growth franchise system into a more selective, opportunity-driven user of space. The brand’s activity now centers on stabilizing existing restaurants, refranchising where it makes sense, and entering markets where there is still residual awareness of the name. For landlords, brokers, and developers, Tilted Kilt functions as a flexible full-service restaurant that can backfill former bar-and-grill or casual-dining boxes, bring evening and late-night traffic, and complement entertainment, hospitality, and retail co-tenants in projects that benefit from an experience-oriented food-and-beverage anchor.