How do restaurants get away with marking up wine 50, 100 even 200%!?!?!?!? I'm pretty new to the wonderful world of wine but I don't mind spending $50, $100 or $200 on a good bottle of wine (ok not $200 very often) but I don't like to pay $50 for a $15 bottle of wine!!! It just sucks all the life out of it for me. So this is a long winded way of asking what do the wine drinkers of the world do at a restaurant. Do you just eat the 100% mark up and try to enjoy or to you pay the $20 corking fee......or do you drink water?

Just say NO. If you are paying $100 for a bottle of wine, there is a problem. Some places allow you to bring your own wine and just charge a $5 corking fee. Check with your favorite restaurants.

honestly the wine I enjoy the most tend to be in the $15-$40 range. The corking fee here in the Spokane, Wa area is either $15 or $20. So it like a catch 22. Do I pay a $15 corking fee for a $15 bottle or do I pay $35 for there bottle? A prime example, I purchase a bottle of adelsheim 2004 Pinot Noir for $20(a great pinot!) and every restuarant I've been to in town has it for $38. I love to have wine with my meals and I love to go out to eat but It's such a sour taste and it almost ruins the experiance (plus it's a drain on my budget!!)

Okay, I'll play devil's advocate...

Do you really think you're not paying the same mark-up for the food (if not more)? I can understand if you don't, but you pay quite a large mark-up from the grocery store. And why is this somehow more acceptable?

There are a lot of huge costs to operate a restaurant: labor costs for back of the house and some front of house positions (chefs and such are not cheap), rent/mortgage at today's real estate prices, insurance, FICA match, advertising, constant equipment repairs and replacements, property taxes, etc...When you add up only payroll and costs of goods sold, most restaurants (of any quality) usually end up around 65%-70% of total sales. Factor in all those other things, and life can get rough.

I understand that some restaurants go way out of line by marking wines up past an appropriate level, but remember: to operate a great restaurant it costs money. That money comes from customers that will come back and pay for something that equals more than just good food and wine: a pleasureable experience.

Your point is very valid on the cost to run a good restaurant, but I can't run to the store and buy a gourmet meal that will be cooked for me. I would have to prepare it and it may or may not turn out. That is worth paying for! But I can walk to local wine shop and buy the exact same wine at a fraction of the cost. I guess my point is they are doing nothing with the wine but pulling the cork and I know they pay much less than retail. The food makes sense but the wine just doesn't.

There are justified complaints from restaurants that if the cork fee is too low, people will bring in White Zin. Most restaurant will not allow you to bring something that is on their list. I wouldn't complain if your $20 bottle cost $38. It is sometimes $60.

I know you're new to wine, but I would think that the minimal current retail price of your wine should be $35. If you had a 10-year-old $20-on-release bottle, that would qualify.

Also, get a box of 6 Spiegelau or Reidel glasses. You already have your "wine purse". That way, you're going to have good stemware if the restaurant doesn't.

If the wine mark ups are too high, BYO (if you can and the corkage is reasonable) or don't go. If the food mark ups are too high or the food is crap, don't go. Restaurants with silly mark-ups, poor food, crap service etc. can only survive if people keep spending money there. Unless you live in a town with few options, vote with your wallet and only go to restaurants that tick all your boxes for price, quality and service.

This is one of the few subjects that really frosts my rear. Three years ago I took a client to a well known restaurant in La Quinta. The meal was meant to thank the client for his business. The meal consisted of three people. We all had steaks. I ordered the wine. A Byron Standard Pinot Noir. $97.00 a bottle. This wine retailed for $17.00 bucks. An absolute rip-off. The steaks were terrible and the waiter talked to the bartender most of the meal. I haven't been back to the restaurant and don't intend to ever return. I tell everyone that plans to go there to avoid the wine list if I can't talk them out of going. As for struggling, the owner drives a Bentley. Hardly struggling. I appreciate a good meal and good wine to accompany it, but I don't want my wallet picked at the cash register. BTW, the entire meal was $390.00 before the gratuity. The owner has restaurants in three cities I travel to. I tell the same story in each city. There's no excuse to mark up a bottle of wine 441% over retail.

quote:

Originally posted by ronmc2:
There are justified complaints from restaurants that if the cork fee is too low, people will bring in White Zin. Most restaurant will not allow you to bring something that is on their list. I wouldn't complain if your $20 bottle cost $38. It is sometimes $60.

I know you're new to wine, but I would think that the minimal current retail price of your wine should be $35. If you had a 10-year-old $20-on-release bottle, that would qualify.

Also, get a box of 6 Spiegelau or Reidel glasses. You already have your "wine purse". That way, you're going to have good stemware if the restaurant doesn't.

Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that your being sarcastic? Wine purse?? Are you in the habit of paying 60 for a 20 bottle of wine? The average retail price in CA is differant than WA. Thanks for the info.......

How about wine inventory?
If you order a bottle of wine, you expect the restaurant to have it, right?
Or you expect the restaurant to have a descent wine list, also a lot of you complain about restaurants not having older vintages.
Well, all that cost money.
In a restaurant the budget is divided by categories, i.e Labor cost, food cost, wine cost... The latter is used to buy the inventory.
Are the restaurants supposed to make a 10-20 dollars profit a bottle but are expected to have great lists with depth in vintages and all?
Also in this country, in maybe 90% of the restaurants if someone doesn't like a wine(I'm not talking about corked/cooked wine) people expect the restaurant to take back the wine and open something else, so does the restaurant have to lose money? Remember, this is a business, noone wants to lose money.

Not everyone is a wine geek you know.
Some people have a lot of money or even enough money to buy whatever bottle they want.
Not everyone has a cellar.
I often get people bringing wine costing less than the corkage fee (~$20) or one time people coming with Trader's Joe paper bags with wine they bought there right before coming to the restaurant
My point is, do what others told you, BYO period
If they don't allow it then go somewhere else but don't complain about it because noone is forcing you...

ArieS, you keep mentioning this bloke noone. Who is he ???

On the point of customers sending back a wine THEY have ordered because they don't like it (rather than it being faulty), there is no excuse and the customer should pay full stop. If the wine was suggested by the wait staff/somm., and does not meet the customers expectations, then there may be some grounds for not paying for the wine. Regardless, from a customer point of view, if a restaurant is gouging on price, has a poor selection etc., I'm not particularly concerned if they can't make a profit. I don't go.

quote:

ArieS, you keep mentioning this bloke noone. Who is he ???

That would be Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits - "Henry the eighth I am, I am
Henry the eighth I am"

Two things:

1. A restaurant that marks up 5 or 6 time the price deserves to go out of business. I would be perfectly happy with double the retail price but it's normally a lot more.

2. Somebody that brings White Zin to a restaurant deserves crap food to go with it. (This is a joke for those of a nervous disposition. Nobody deserves crap food because of their wine. Oh sod it, why do I have to keep explaining myself?)

Our pricing is as follows:

We take the "retail price" of the wine and add $20 to it. If the "retail price" of the wine is less than $20, we only add $15 to it. For calculation purposes, we assume the "retail price" is 40% above the wholesale cost I can by it for.

For example, a bottle of wine that I pay $10 wholesale for would be listed on our wine list for $29 ($10 + $4 (40%) = $14 retail + $15 restaurant markup).

A bottle of wine that wholesales for $20 would be priced at $48 ($20 + $8 (40%) = $28 retail + $20 restaurant markup).

By using this pricing model, the best values on our wine list are the most expensive ones as they are only $20 above what you would (hypothetically) pay for them at retail. $20 dollars above retail is like a corkage fee.

Granted, most of our wines are priced at $50 and less. This price range allows us to earn a decent but not great margin on our wine. But what is does (by design) is reward those who know, appreciate and order higher end wines. I welcome these customers and want to reward them and have them dine with me instead of at a BYOB.

just curious---- What is the markup on a suit, or a pair of shoes, or a dozen golf balls?

quote:

Originally posted by irwin:
just curious---- What is the markup on a suit, or a pair of shoes, or a dozen golf balls?

I don't know about mark-up, but the difference in the golf balls and the bottle of wine is percived value.

Few of us know the real cost of the manufactured goods, but all of us know the retail price of a bottle of wine. It's very hard for me to pay restaurant mark-ups on the wines they sell and I'd rather bring my own, if I have a choice.

If you buy a case of diet coke in cans at a warehouse store (Costco, Walmart, etc) you get a 12 oz can for about 25 cents.
If you buy a 12 oz cup of the same stuff, with ice, at a major league baseball stadium, it's probably $3.50.

I try to identify those restaurants that have a fair markup and those are the ones getting my business. Exceptions to this rule, though they are rare, may apply when I know that the chef is extraordinary and may have preparations that I can’t experience elsewhere. Earlier in the thread RobM asked the question relating to the markup on food. I do not equate this to the markup on wine. The food markup is more justifiable in my mind because I am paying for the talent of the chef and the preparation of the food. With the wine, the quality lies with the winemaker and the grapes. Overall, this is not a dilemma that I face often because if I want a killer bottle of wine I’ll break it out of my own stash and prepare the meal myself. I can do this because I feel that I can prepare a gourmet meal better than 90% of the chefs out there.

quote:

Originally posted by irwin:
If you buy a case of diet coke in cans at a warehouse store (Costco, Walmart, etc) you get a 12 oz can for about 25 cents.
If you buy a 12 oz cup of the same stuff, with ice, at a major league baseball stadium, it's probably $3.50.

..which is one of many reasons I don't watch baseball or go to the stadiums

Just a differenct view... When I was in Florence Italy the price of the wine was almost the same as in the retail stores. This made it so much more enjoyable to order whatever I wanted in the restaurant.

quote:

Originally posted by WA-wine-lover:
Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that your being sarcastic? Wine purse?? Are you in the habit of paying 60 for a 20 bottle of wine? The average retail price in CA is differant than WA.

Actually, my point was that you are already bringing a 2-bottle wine bag in one hand, so with your free hand, bring a box of glasses. Half the people will give you a strange look; the other half will understand that you are serious about wine.

No. I find restaurants to BYO for a reasonable corkage.

RE: Retail price-it is within 10%, so I don't understand the relevance.

quote:

Originally posted by WA-wine-lover:
honestly the wine I enjoy the most tend to be in the $15-$40 range. The corking fee here in the Spokane, Wa area is either $15 or $20. So it like a catch 22. Do I pay a $15 corking fee for a $15 bottle or do I pay $35 for there bottle? A prime example, I purchase a bottle of adelsheim 2004 Pinot Noir for $20(a great pinot!) and every restuarant I've been to in town has it for $38. I love to have wine with my meals and I love to go out to eat but It's such a sour taste and it almost ruins the experiance (plus it's a drain on my budget!!)

For my part, I consider a restaurant price of $38 for $20 bottle of wine to be fair.

Tired topic.

A steak is marked up over 100% too. Do you know what Soda costs a restaurant that's charging you $2.00 a glass? About 15 cents.

Luckily there are places that allow you to bring your own wine

You'd look funny bringing in your own steak and soda though.

Tom Hudson's pricing model is the best way to mark up wine. My observation is that the more astute restautants use pricing structures similar to Tom's. That's why you'll see a $20 (retail) bottle listed at $40, which looks like a 100% mark-up, and a bottle of Dom at $150 which looks like a 40% mark-up.

Irwin, if you were talking about suits and shoes in high-end department stores, the normal mark-up is between 150% and 200% of the store's costs.