So is there a formula or traditional amount that restaurants typically mark up bottle of wine? We went out to dinner last night and ordered a bottle of red and a bottle of white over the course of the evening. I got to thinking later that I’d love to find the red we had and get a few bottles for myself and started wondering if there was any way to judge from what the cost was if I could guesstimate what it would cost for me to get. No reason, just one of those things I think about sometimes 
.
Annette
-
Find maximum possible markup Mollen will pay
-
Double it
-
Add 25%
pricing is all over the board–from tiny markups to 300% or more. Just use wine-searcher and find the wine.
+1. Zero formula. Seen negative markups (I guess that would be a markdown?) and seen 600% markups.
Was just at a restaurant that had the 03 Lalande for $475. Ridiculous. We accidently drank it before we saw the price.
that one’s never worked for me, no matter how many times I’ve tried it
Trust me, it didn’t! My wife jeered at me in a way of saying, “you better pick up that tab” since it included her friends that aren’t winos. So I did, ouch!
As a rule of thumb, if you liked the wine at restaurant pricing, you will probably be thrilled at the retail pricing; a good thing since you will want to pound a bottle to cope with your resentment at the premium you paid to the restaurant.
To be more specific, as others have mentioned, restaurant pricing tends to be 200% to 300% of retail. Wines by the glass generally carry the greatest markups. The price per glass is often the price for the bottle at wholesale, though I’m seeing more cases where the glass costs more than the retail price for the bottle. That can be infuriating, but I think it is important not to let focus on percentages obscure the bottom line. I’m much happier paying $75 for an excellent $30 bottle at 250% of retail, than $250 for a $125 retail bottle, even though the percentage is much lower. A $45 premium costs me a lot less than a $125 premium.
Finally, though.comparisons to retail are a good way for consumers to quantify opportunity cost, remember that restaurants aren’t paying retail, they pay wholesale price, so the premium over retail is on top of the markup from wholesale.
With the internet at your fingertips, use CellarTracker to check out wines while browsing a wine list. I do it periodically to look at notes or check out retail prices.
Money well spent sir.
Agree with you. I also willing to pay a premium for certain price range of wine in restaurant (for their service). But not for the very high price one, except restaurant in Burgundy where the top grand cru wines seems quite cheap to drink, I had a DRC Vosne Romanee 2008 for Euro 490 something in a restaurant in Beaune (Burgundy) couple months ago, which I think it is very good value.
Subscribe to www.wine-searcher.com, you’ll find the wine at a good price (and learn how much you got gouged).
Annette,
For many American restaurants, it depends on the wine. If a wine list is full of wines that are generally unknown to you or anyone on this board, or have few reviews or information on CT, expect the markup to be astronomical. These are close-outs that the restaurant bought from their distributor for pennies on the dollar.
Obviously these are the restaurants to avoid. If you walk into a place, after accumulating a fair amount of wine knowledge, and still can’t place most wines, order beer.
Better, peruse the byob forums and keep a good list of places that will happily accommodate you and your own wine.
Scot
Scot, markups aside, “close-outs that the restaurant bought from their distributor for pennies on the dollar” are often the most interesting wines that distributor had but, since those wineries don’t have ride along reps and case depletion funding, they get dumped to make way for those that do.
We just sold a boatload of 2003 Chameleon NAPA VALLEY Charbono for $8.99 that had people falling on their knees it was so good. In the same batch were five cases of a fabulous 1990 Chianti Classico Riserva that was just singing, all now gone at $9.99.
This is from a 2002 newsletter explaining the piles of inexpensive wine in the store:
The Deals just keep on Dropping:
There is a tremendous nervousness amongst many importers and distributors this season that has them figuring that they can sell their big branded stuff for full price but they need to get out of some of the more interesting hand sell labels (read as the sort of stuff we and you LOVE) so almost everyday we have some new miracle of modern pricing. One enterprising broker even coined the term “Introductory Close-Out” to launch a new line of wines! This reminds us of when we were young and were able to score all the best Jazz, Blues and Oldies records (vinyl, remember?) in what were called the “cut-out” bins where record companies would dump all their “prestige” artists (read producers of quality music) so they could concentrate on selling Englebert Humperdink and The 1910 Fruitgum Company’s latest.
This space reserved for a delicious, easy to drink red at just $3.99, call for today’s selection*!
I really don’t see restaurant mark-ups as gouging. Yes restaurant wine prices can be shocking, but these are businesses and it is pretty well known that restaurants make most of their money on alcohol. So my recourse is to either not order the wine, or increasingly frequently, bringing my own. Or I just hold my nose and order the weirdly pricey 2006 Calon Segur as I did recently in a NY restaurant. After giggling at the comically incompetent decanting (no damage done), I proceeded to enjoy the wine.
What bugs me more is seeing all the 2009 and 2010 burgs and bordeaux on menus that are both ludicrously priced and undrinkably young. I get why they are there, but … Sigh.
What Roberto said.
The wines on a restaurant list can get there any number of ways. If the person buying is really into wine, he or she will find interesting stuff that is being closed out because it can’t find a home. If the person isn’t into wine, he or she will just tell one of the liquor guys to bring a few reds and some whites. Liquor is far more important to most restaurants than wine is and people who buy liquor are brand loyal - they typically don’t like to try something new every night.
As to whether a wine is discussed on here or on CT - that’s completely irrelevant and a bad rule of thumb. People talk about the same wines and regions over and over. I wouldn’t let discussions or TNs on some website affect what I was going to purchase. Not sure what accumulating a fair amount of wine knowledge is, but after thousands of wines, I have yet to accumulate much wine knowledge and the fact that I don’t know something on a list isn’t indicative of the quality of the list. It’s just indicative of the limitations of my own experience.
The rule used to be that the price of a glass in a restaurant was the wholesale price of the bottle. That doesn’t tell the customer much though, because the customer doesn’t know the wholesale price. So figure a $10 wholesale price. A typical retailer will mark it up to $15 but depending on their business model, you’ll also find it for $12.99 or up to $19.99. Average restaurant price will be around $10, but again, that depends on the restaurant.
Why the difference? Retailers can often buy in volume and secure good deals that way. Remember their business is to manage inventory. Restaurants offer wine not as their main business, which is yet something else that they offer in an array of services. So they keep some inventory, but not everyone who eats orders wine and therefore, the wine may not turn over for a while. There’s a carrying cost for inventory.
Then there’s the additional service offered by a restaurant. They maintain glasses, which break, as well as waiters and waitresses, and maybe even a somm to devote full time to finding wines and matching them to the menu. In spite of the markup, wine isn’t usually a big profit center.
Can be though. It would just mean a different approach. Restaurants don’t have to keep extensive lists - you’re only going to order one or two or three bottles anyway, so who cares if there are four thousand bottles on the wine list? Also, restaurants don’t need to offer old vintages. There are some restaurants that only charge the regular retail price. They don’t offer old vintages or a deep selection, but it’s a worthy approach IMO. And if I want an older wine, they let me bring my own.
Markups aren’t always even across a restaurants list but you’ll begin to recognize bottles that you’ve seen at retail and you can judge the markup that way. There are a number of threads on this topic. You could always try BYOB but not ever state or restaurant allows it.
Edit: I see on the byob forum you’re already pursuing that option.
No one seems to have offered the simple answer: typically 2x to 3x the retail bottle price. And, as others have said, the profit is actually higher, since the restaurant is buying wholesale, which is usually 25-33% below retail.
The free version is very good, too. Try it before forking over money to wine-searcher.
Roberto,
I’m not talking about well-intentioned discoveries (passed on the customer?). I’m referring to the often observed practice of filling up a wine list with the most obscure bs to intentionally confuse patrons so that the restaurant can charge a significant markup. I’m sure a lot of this comes from our friends in the middle-tier who market such crapola to less-informed restaurateurs.