I expect the argument would be that you’re not consigning, but making an equity contribution 
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Come to NJ some time, where most restaurants don’t even have a policy on corkage! (those with licenses).
I called one place one time and the woman said (I think she was just a hostess), why would you want to bring your own wine when we have a full bar? The concept was so lost to her.
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Plenty of places like that in NYC too. No one has ever tried at the random Italian place across from Penn Station! Of course it doesn’t matter. But I know Michelin star places where it’s been the subject of serious negotiations.
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I get it in NYC. If you don’t want to offer corkage, I think there’s nothing wrong with that.
If you want to charge $150+ at the super fancy places, I have no issues with that either.
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100%. Corkage is a privilege, not a right.
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Eh i think a typo on my end if memory serves me. 12 cl vs 48 cl. When i asked the Somm he clearly said 1 glass vs 4. That is why i asked the follow up questions.
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I’ve definitely had that reaction. Generally that was at places where they actually allowed corkage but the host/ess had no idea what it was.
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I can’t think of a place in Pittsburgh that doesn’t allow it (always a corkage fee even at unlicensed restaurants). Hardly anyone brings wine from what I can tell.
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Well, to be clear, it’s never going to be a great analysis from my professional perspective, but I can say that in 2023 corkage was 0.09% of revenue, 0.4% of overall wine sales, and 1.3% of wine bottle sales. So, it is essentially a rounding error for us, but we have a great, well-priced wine list…
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was the above calculated as total revenue from corkage fees charged over total wine bottle sales revenue?
That’s a fair point to make about to make about anything where individual variability can have an decent sized effect on the outcome. I agree with YB in that I don’t think BYO matters on average and won’t be the reason that any restaurant makes it or doesn’t. For my restaurant specifically, we offer it as a general vibe thing and because we have been a restaurant for wine lovers. But again, I don’t think folks would call our list gouging.
We track it as best we can through the POS and policy, but you are correct that the count isn’t exact, but measurement error is a fact of life in my profession, so I live with it. I think the numbers I gave you are pretty accurate.
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Yes, total wine bottle sales. Not total wine sales (BTG is ~12-3% of revenue, bottle ~7-8%). To put it further in context, corkage was less than revenue from one wine dinner (but it is “pure” profit, sorta).
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thanks for the additional context. don’t spend it all in one place!
One thing about Corkage that I always have been curious about is that somms will say that the charge has to be high enough to stop people from bringing a bottle of two buck chuck which looks bad. Does this really happen if the corkage fee is $25 or more?
I have also noticed a lot restaurants have corkage fees that are substantially higher than bottles on there list. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say this is probably due to staffing issues and them not having time to reprice the list.
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I’ve thought about a model that was a retail mark-up plus our corkage fee. It would raise the price of 90% of the bottles on the list by an average of $9 a bottle (median $12). This would make the very highest end wines cost substantially less at the expense of the wines our customers consume the most increasing in price. It’s certainly transparent and would work well if we operated as a hybrid (we have a quasi separate space) wine shop + restaurant. We decided against it but I think about it from time to time.
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I’m just one diner who eats out only once a month at nice restaurants, but if I knew that my beverage director/somm was incentivized solely to maximize restaurant profits instead of curate a list (responding to this comment here near the top: “Give them an incentive structure that rewards selling wine and I guarantee wine sales and profits will rise. Too many somms think their job is just to curate a list.”) , I’d be way less likely to trust that sommelier or order wine from them.
But I appreciate I’m not trying to keep a restaurant afloat so I am privileged to hold this belief.
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You would be amazed at what people will bring.
Quick tangent, as a restaurant owner the amount of breakage on wine glasses is really unreal.
Ha! That would certainly discourage it.
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This is kind of what some bottle shops in SF do; the markup is fairly fixed, scales from like 30-50 even if the bottle hits like 100 dollars. I could definitely see a stepped system working well and being transparent about it, but IDK if selling that big bottle with a 3x markup is worth the slowdown in sales from having that big markup. Would be curious to read more about this.
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They aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, I would say that you will do better with a better list.
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encourage you to look back at that massive corkage thread referenced above as every possible permutation was discussed. Arvid’s incredibly generous contributions likely the most impactful and helpful.
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