I did try to find the 2 wines we drank on CT, both came up as “nothing found” type answer. I did a bit more research and found a wine store near me that stocks the red we drank for about $20 per bottle, we paid $60 as I recall. I understand the restaurant is a business so have no problem with the markup generally, we are paying for the experience as much as anything else. I am planning on going to the wine store and getting half a case and giving a bottle to each of the couples we were out with and keeping the rest.
On a side note, we ran into our old next door neighbors while at this new restaurant. The husband, Jim, was some sort of Napa Wine guy. He worked at one of the big wineries, PR or something, but of course this was all told to me years ago before I cared a wit about wine so didn’t pay attention. I will say though that he was telling me he thought the restaurant had a really nice wine selection so that was a point in their favor!
The word “gouging” is loaded; let’s just say that your post is a perfect illustration why the practice is economically ill-considered. You are obviously a wine drinker, you don’t see the typical markups as gouging, but you routinely forego wine altogether or bring your own. If you were an economist and were advising a restaurant, what lesson would you draw from that?
The logic of this has never made sense to me. “Yes, I only sell wine to a small percentage of my customers, and many of them bring their own, but hey . . . I get 300% markup on the few bottles I sell! Yay for me!”
Sell at a price that puts a bottle on nearly every table and have a look at your P&L at the end of the year. Maybe that 300% markup won’t look so good.
I wonder if it is only wine geeks who increasingly resent the price of wines in restaurants. I am certainly in this class and more and more I look to bring my own. But I have a sense that friends, who like a bottle of wine with their meal but don’t collect wine are more open to just paying what they can in restaurants.
My experience with non-aficionados is that they rarely resent wine prices or worry about gouging - they don’t have a sense of retail prices so don’t have that reaction. Instead the more common reaction is just to be stunned by the wine list and react somewhere between mild terror and bewilderment. Usually that leads to picking the cheapest option in a safe category (eg. California reds) or asking the somm for a recommendation at a particular price point.
Another problem I have with the idea that wine pricing is gouging is the implication that restauranteurs are evil people that are trying to rip off unsuspecting eaters. Most that I’ve known (at least at good restaurants that are likely to have decent wine) are beyond the opposite - people who love food and want to share that love with others. Wine is part of the experience. It’s absolutely possible to both want to give the customer a great and fair experience, and at the same time to try to run a business that makes money.
it’s a form of price differentiation. The less price sensitive consumers are charged a higher price when they buy off the list versus corkage charged for a similar wine. The practice likely works better than you think which accounts for its prevalence.
Sometimes there’s just no rhyme or reason for the pricing. On Tuesday I went to dinner at place that had a bottle of 96 Cos d’Estournel for $625 and a bottle of Fourrier’s 2010 Clos St. Jacques for $525. So from an approximately 350% mark-up to a 35% mark-up. Go figure.
Was out to dinner last night at an Italian restaurant in Chicago. Saw a Paul Hobbs Napa Cabernet (not the Crossbarn) on the list for $110. Unfortunately sold out (I wonder why) and had to settle for a 2010 La Jota Howell Mountain Cabernet for $95.
Traditionally, markups have been 2.5-3 times wholesale. Lots of variation however. Usually the more serious a restaurant’s wine program, the lower the markup.
This is one of the first threads I posted in, and many thoughtful comments (by Tom, Greg, Neal, many more) here are still relevant to the current discussion on restaurant markups.
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