Paul
Agree, but requiring corkage is unlikely to be legislated. Is it required in any other state?
Here’s the details of his plan. Increase the ratio of licenses to population limit by 10% each year for 5 years and then remove the limit altogether after that.
“It is expected to be hotly contested by existing license holders”
https://whyy.org/articles/nj-gov-murphy-state-of-the-state-address-2023/amp/
I don’t expect it to be required but I would hope most restaurants would offer it. Otherwise I won’t be eating out often in NJ.
The thing is we have some byo restaurants that have great food that we can pair with great wines. Very unlikely that these places will have well curated wine lists, so we end up with sub par wines.
Some will allow corkage, some won’t. Some will charge reasonable fees, some won’t. Some will have limits, some won’t.
As I’ve said in numerous corkage threads, it’s up to the establishment to set the policy, up to me if I want to dine there or not. Looks like you are in agreement on point 2. We can encourage restaurants to do so and withhold our dining dollars but NJ restaurants have paid top $ for the license and they want to maximize their revenue. This may be short sighted as you have to bring in diners to have any revenue at all. But BYOBers are a minority anyway as many people prefer a restaurant with a license, especially for cocktails (spirits are not allowed to be BYOB in NJ).
And to address Chris’ comment, 95% of people don’t care about a crappy wine list as long as Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio and Josh Cabernet were on it
Just to give an idea of this from the license holders’ point of view, a few years ago I was talking with the owner of a resto in Princeton. Pretty good place, if not stellar. In any case, the subject of liquor licenses came up and they mentioned that they had to pay $500,000 for theirs (no that’s not a typo). The problem being that there were only so many available in town.
Yes Peter. 1 license per 3,000 residents per town. Scarcity drives cost as license holders sell theirs on the open market. New licenses are only issued if population increases.
Murphy’s proposal as I read it is to increase to 1.1 in yr 1
1.2 in year 2, etc
If cap is repealed after 5 years l, that $500,000 license will be worth about $20,000
I agree and I think (for us here on this board) sadly the BYO wine group who wants to bring a nice bottle is in the minority. I think most would rather get a cocktail versus going to a BYO and bringing their own bottle of Josh Cabernet or Santa Margarita as Tony referenced above.
Consumers as a whole are probably for it, business owners without licenses likely want it, the government wants it because they can get revenue by selling them, but the existing license holders have the biggest complaint.
I had a fantastic dinner yesterday at Amayar Kitchen in Hackensack. It’s a tiny Burmese place, literally a mom and pop establishment (they are in the kitchen and various other family members run the foh). BYO naturally. You could do takeout but the family is so charming (the mom and dad came out multiple times to tell us about the food and chat) that I recommend eating there…call ahead though as the 3 or 4 tables and counter were
all full at least on a weekend night.
Has Sushi Kai in Fort Lee continued to hold up? Aoki?
Sushi Kai is still the best omakase you can get in NJ. It is still out of this world. Aoki I haven’t been to since Kai opened but it was always good.
New update!
Went to the new iteration of Fascino last night, Gioia Mia. It’s the same location (and funny enough, still says Fascino in Uber!), and it was FANTASTIC. If you loved the old restaurant, you will flip for the new one. The pasta dishes were absolutely sublime, the two different versions of the oysters were exceptional (slight edge to the chilled), the duck mousse was so rich it was like chocolate cake (in a good way), and the pork chop was out of this world. The best dish though- the pork belly. Just wow. Incredibly balanced dish, which is hard to do with a fatty piece of meat.
For the wine side- BYOB! And the stemware is terrific too. No need to bring your own!
That is good news. We liked Fascino, look forward to the updated menu
This is MUCH better, and more creative.
I am already making plans to go back.
seems like a win for breweries and kinda still status quo for us who like BYOs. Now mall real estate can get some extra licenses and you cannot sit on a license for 2+ years, but no new licenses outside of malls will be granted:
I never understood why the malls couldn’t get a license to cover the whole mall. Made no sense to me.
Malls sucked up all the licenses in Short Hills, and left the landscape without much to speak of in the downtown area. This should really help.
We should update the top post. A bunch of these places closed!
Rezza, The Manor, Fascino (now Gioia Mia and better), Tillie’s, Khan Thai, A Toute Heure, Pairings, and Arturo’s is now Artie’s, and they have a liquor license.
I was watching this closely. Murphy tried to use the craft breweries as leverage for his broader liquor license agenda. He conditionally vetoed the 1st bill and it wasn’t because of mall liquor licenses. He eventually knew he had to settle for this as he pushing up against a hard lobby.
In the summer, some of the affected breweries created an IPA called “Sign the bill, Phil!”
The issue is that no one seemed to have come up with a viable option for compensating license owners who paid $1+ million for the license if they were going to dilute the value of the licenses.
The truth is that the non-license holder contingent was much smaller than you might have thought. And it wasn’t that they weren’t organized. Ehren Ryan (from Common Lot) spent a lot of time with the governor and his people, and had a really tough time recruiting people to his cause.
If you can’t beat em, join em
I didn’t like Fascinó but very happy with the new place. They were very accommodating also with my 2 shippers and wine bag in a fairly small space.