cocktails / mocktails
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I usually order beer in those circumstances. Or just abstain.
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At 4x markups - I will just drink beer, cocktails, or sparkling water if they are reasonably priced. I’ve just ordered tap water before when all of the drinks are just outrageous. This is the type of behavior I don’t want to encourage.
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The hard part about paying these prices is knowing what the wine costs to buy outright. I typically pass on the large restaurant purchase and have a nice bottle on the counter ready to go when we get home. If I must have wine, I will find something lower cost so as to not too severely overpay for a bottle.
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iced tea.
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Completely agreed. We have the same situation here in Chicago. There’s a rather well-regarded steakhouse in town that charges $100 for corkage. The wine list is priced similarly with 3-4x mark-up. My solution? Go to one of the other dozen, excellent steakhouses that do offer BYO at much more reasonable corkage (if any). This should be available in spades in big markets like NYC.
Unless the food is truly other worldly and deserves a beverage to match, it does not make sense to me to pay 4x for a bottle that you otherwise wouldn’t even buy for your own collection.
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+1. If I am looking at a restaurant because of some great main courses but could not find a single first course option that interested me, I would not go. For me, wine is part of the meal. So, if the restaurant doesn’t offer any choices (from their list or corkage) of interest. It’s an easy pass. Too many great choices (particularly in NY) to make that kind of sacrifice.
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Same here. Often a non mainstream white, like a chenin or something more obscure.
Major category wines, especially champagne, are less likely to have a decent value lurking somewhere, but you never know, all it takes is one.
But I don’t know the place Mark went to, and he probably has more than enough experience to find if there were any good values lurking.
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Enjoy it for what it is and skip the wine. Cocktails, beer, seltzer. Having a great wine with a meal like this does take it to another level. But I’m not willing to pay $300+ for a middling wine or even $500-$600 for a slightly elevated wine. Mama said there’d be days like this 
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I would love to see some market research on net wine bottle profit for restaurants that markup 3/4x vs. those that are 2x and under. Is it really a win to sell one bottle of $500 Burgundy when 10 other would-be-bottle-purchasers are turned away by the prices? I’ve always assumed a sliding scale would work best, but I’m also not in the industry and don’t know how complicated that would be to apply.
What is the minimum per bottle profit (or loss) you want to make for your staff to open a bottle and set/clean glasses? Start with that margin on your entry level bottles, and apply a pricing formula up to another fixed but very nice margin for bottles above a certain number. How many single glass or one cocktail meals could you turn into nice multi-bottle purchases and repeat business? I guess certain markets just sell enough bottles and don’t care, but I don’t see it in mine.
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The wine you first ordered was sold out?!? A restaurant of this caliber and wine program should NEVER have a list that isn’t totally up-to-date. That’s almost as frustrating as the markups.
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I’ve thought of this as well. While I think the number of people out there who can recite the rough retail price of wines on the list is fairly low, the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen is that when the markups are high, you see few bottles being ordered and when the markups are low, you see a lot of bottles being ordered. Even though the average person doesn’t know the exact markup of wines on the list, it seems they act similarly to how you’d expect they would if they did know.
There’s clearly some kind of profit maximizing middle ground. There’s also a tradeoff between shorter-term profit maximization and “maintaining” the list for the long-term, if you’re a restaurant with strong financial backing. It also obviously depends on the clientele of the restaurant, and very high end restaurants may thrive on pairings, where the markups are even higher but less obvious, and be OK not selling bottles.
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- Cocktails
- Something from a geekier area. I’ve found more value in Loire, Beaujolais, or even Germany than most other regions.
- Some years ago Levi wrote an article recommending the lowest priced bottle/glass on the last as often being something that the somm was interested in and wanted people to try. Not the 2nd least expensive as many customers choose that by default so it usually has one of the highest markups.
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Cocktails are not good with food. My recommendation would be to go for a couple of wines by the glass. They are hand selected by the Somm and enables you to pair wine to each course. Okay the wine by the glass will be 75 percent GP but it won’t break the bank and you might be surprised.
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I had recently caught this recent GuildSomm podcast with Annie Shi of King and Jupiter restaurants in NYC… GuildSomm Podcast: Wine Program Philosophy and Pricing on Apple Podcasts It gives you a personal perspective from a restaurant beverage director of two city restaurants of different sizes. I found it insightful and the same time frustrating on how pricing comes about. The podcast is about 45 min long.
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This! Unless I am mistaken, Mark is referring to Le Bernardin. (I recall him discussing this meal in another thread.) @Mark_Golodetz certainly knows his stuff, so may be the by the glass just didn’t do it for him. But it has worked for me when I have dined there.
(It’s also often true, as others noted, that there are a few things on the list that you can arbitrage so to speak. We were at Naro on Tuesday and they had a PYCM Rosé for $75; it seemed like a no-brainer to me, especially WITH their food. There were four of us, so we split a split of champagne to start.)
I can’t spend 45 minutes on this, Gary, but what’s the takeaway, please? I’d be curious. We loved King when it first opened, but now they march you in and out`of there. The old Yogi Berra thing: “it’s so crowded, no one goes there any more.”
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There’s no good purpose served by “blaming” the restaurant, and they are well within their rights to charge what the market will bear for both food and beverages, but it is lamentable for me that many restaurants take this approach. I will not pay 4x retail for a wine, and I will not eat at a fine dining restaurant without wine that is at least a pleasure to drink. That means there are great restaurants I just don’t visit.
If I am forced into this situation, I will drink by the glass or do the best I can with the list. Usually there are delicious Italian whites that are vastly under-priced for quality at retail and so 4x is still a price that I can stomach. Ditto with rioja or perhaps a CDR.
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I usually just get a glass of wine. Even then it can be expensive. I was just in New York and went to a hot restaurant in the West Village. It was incredibly expensive but the food was very good. I paid $26 for a glass of a simple Savigny Les Beaune which retails for $29! And it was a tiny glass!
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Several points and I sure I will miss some. Note that this is for restaurants that are thoughtful and creative with their wine list curation.
- By the glass wine lists are difficult to fill as people are looking for value and have expectation to see well known varietals(chardonnay & pinot noir). Also unknown varietals can be harder to sell.
- All wine lists are evaluated frequently to see what sells and whether the price needs to be lowered or raised.
- Glassware is factored into the price. Jupiter had Zalto stemware and decanters to offer for bottle purchasers. They had significant breakage that had to be factored into the price. With better cost options for quality glass has softened that problem but breakage is still a cost to be factored in.
- Bigger discounts for larger case purchases from distributors. Smaller restaurants with no storage pay higher price than those with high storage space.
- Very key for beverage directors to forge relationships with distributors that carry portfolios you like. They can then make good suggestions on new wines they carry.
- Important education to servers so that they can provide good information to customers on wine choices.
- Cocktails are a good revenue stream compared to wine.
The perspective of a knowledgeable beverage manager to be pretty interesting. In looking at the wine lists for King and Jupiter restaurants they are pretty impressive.
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