Wine Locker at Restaurant

I’m considering getting a wine locker at a restaurant that’s at our club. There’s an upfront fee and a monthly fee, but wine’s for the locker are ~20-25% less than the menu pricing, which is decently priced. Anyone use their locker and somm/restaurant’s connections to gain access to wine that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to acquire? I’m in TX, which makes it harder to get some wines due to shipping issues.

Zach, is the restaurant markup the typical 3x retail pricing model? If so, your discount doesn’t matter. Also, what kinds of wines are you into? There are options for those in TX.

If you have to buy off the wine list and it sucks, what’s the point?

I live in AZ, which has a no BYOB law that sucks. I have a locker at the Capital Grille, as it allows me to essentially pre-buy my wine at a lower price than the list. It isn’t a great deal, but it beats over paying off the list for a vintage that was bottled about 30 days ago. Plus, they will essentially source what I want, as long as it is available through their distributors. I can at least get a few years age on SQN, Shafer HSS, and other fav’s.

Interesting. I must admit, whenever I saw wine lockers inside restaurants, I assumed they were for wines that the renters brought in from home and were going to pay corkage on. I didn’t realize they were for wines bought through the restaurant. My knee-jerk reaction upon reading the OP was, “No way in hell.” However, considering horrible corkage laws, I might have reacted too quickly.

I assume you’ve done the simple math. Given how often you dine there and what you typically pay for wine, does the up-front fee AND the monthly fee still total up to less with the discount on the wines versus paying full list price? Obvious question, I know, but it seems like a simple dollars-and-cents question to me.

I suspect the math isn’t that attractive.

I’ve never been tempted, but unless you can bring your own wine to store there, it seems like it’s a restaurant loyalty program that you pay to join.

The markup varies, but generally well priced for a restaurant. I have are actually seen some bottles at the restaurant for less than I’ve bought directly from the winery, even before the discount. We’re into reds - Napa cab, Burgandy, CdP, Beaujolias, which is a pretty wide spectrum!

Texas alcohol laws mandate that any wine stored at the restaurant must be purchased from there, so we couldn’t put outside wine our locker even if we wanted to (the State is protecting us consumers, right?), but we can take the bottles out of the restaurant.

My initial reaction to wine lockers has always been the same as yours, but I like the idea of sourcing wines thru the restaurants distributors (again, thank God the State is protecting us consumers from going direct, right?) along with getting a discount on what we drink.

Yes, I have done the simple math and it does not work, unless we drink a LOT of wines to amortize the upfront cost. But, if we all stuck to the math, we’d all be drinking crappy wine, right.

Jim - this has been exactly my thinking, pre-buy my wines at lower than I’m normally going to pay and pick up some additional hard to get wines along the way.

Ha, fair point Zach. “Sticking to the math” should rarely enter our collective conversations about wine.

The restaurants I know here with WineLockers are exactly that. I think you CAN choose to procure wines through the restaurant (not sure cost structures) but it is mostly (all?) about bringing your own wines in and having them available for you when you dine without having to tote them in each day, plus a corkage waiver for a certain number of bottles.

John Howie Steak provides private wine service for your personal collection. We will professionally store and catalogue your wines on site, in your own temperature-controlled wine locker. When dining at John Howie Steak you will be presented with your personal wine list adding a special touch to your dining experience. Our sommelier will provide you with a personal consultation of your locker wines, a current wine locker inventory, and recommendations to drink or hold as the wines in your collection reach maturity. Note: Wine locker holders are waived the usual corkage fees for up to three bottles per visit. Please contact Sommelier/Wine Director Chris Lara to reserve your personal locker.

Seems like quite the racquet to me:

1. Pay to be member of the club
2. Pay monthly dues
3. Pay the monthly locker fee
4. Pay the markup on the wine

Maybe it is just me, but I don’t see the attraction to this model at all.

I had a locker at Morton’s for years. It was a big joke because it was not temperature controlled and the most expensive bottles I kept in it were things like Borsao and Las Rocas. After the first purchase of wine to get the locker, I never bought any more from them because the prices were a joke. IIRC, my locker was between Nelson Pelz and Jeanine Pirro. Dubious company. The only value was that if I found out that a friend was going to Morton’s for a special dinner like a birthday, I would deliver a bottle to the locker a few days in advance and the manager would make a big deal about opening the locker and giving a fancy bottle to my friend in front of the rest of the restaurant.

Each state and jurisdiction, not to mention commercial entity, obviously is going to have its own situation.

Here in Ohio I would be surprised if there is even a single restaurant which allows on-site storage of outsiders’ wine, but I would glad to be so informed.

At our club, the wine locker program is very worthwhile because here are the wine options:

– order off the list, decent enough selection, and typically marked up to 2-3 time retail, plus pay 20% service charge, plus pay 7.5% tax on the whole thing

– join the locker program for $125/year, buy wine from the club (anything available in Ohio from a distributor who will deliver to the city) at state-minimum retail (without case discount), pay the sales tax, obviously, drink at your leisure. Also, attend distributor showcase for free twice/year (2 persons)

So…if I drink at the $35/bottle retail range and order a bottle off the list for dinner, it is going to cost me at least:

$ 70 wine
$ 14 service charge
$ 6.30 tax

$ 90.30 TOTAL

If I drink from my wine locker, I can have my choice of $35 bottles, and pay just $37.63, including tax, with no service fee.

This is over $43/ bottle MINIMUM savings, every time we dine, and usually it is a lot more, since the markups vary.

No brainer for us, YMMV

At your club, I assume you mean a country club?

yes, a country club (with golf, tennis, etc.), and a decent dining room

I wish our club did the same. Do you think it makes economic sense from the clubs perspective?

I would guess that instead of 2-5 of us dining 3-5 times/month (just counting dinners), we might do so less then half as often. It is also not like they aren’t making money on the wine, just a smaller markup, with no investment since I am paying for it.

I would (personally) say this: as a business, since they are no doubt making a net profit from every meal we eat there, at whatever level, their primary expenses are large, and fixed, and we are certainly not displacing some higher-payer customer, whatever gets us in the door is worthwhile.

Not to mention, the dining arrangements are part of our reason for belonging, and paying for a membership every month. Taken as a dining-only proposition, it would make more economic sense to simply dine out in the most expensive restaurant in town and buy wine off their list…

That location should have been worth something in storytelling value at least.

He would make a big deal of decanting your Borsao or Las Rocas? Now, THAT would be worth paying for!

Calls to mind the quote: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member (or screws me over).”

Our Club does it and we provide the wines (wouldn’t do it based on the OP’s deal). They get $100 per year + $10 / bottle. The other locker owners I speak with all agree that we dine there more frequently because we can get terrific wines at say 1/2 of normal wine list. So, yes I think it’s a winner econmically for the Club. Also, don’t forget, Country Clubs (particularly equity clubs) are in the keeping members happy business because the real money is in the dues.

The State is “protecting” the restaurants. It was TX restaurants that lobbied to have BYO be illegal.