A few data points on the Babbo wine list. Draw your own conclusions.
2005 Traviglini Gattinara 120 on the list 24 on Searcher
2005 Bea Sagrantino de Montefalco 165 on list, 70 on Searcher
2006 Ornellaia 390 on list, 160 on Searcher
2006 Sassicaia 525 on list, 180 on Searcher
2006 Setriolo Chianti Riserva 90 on list, 47 on Searcher.
2006 Taurasi Feudi di San Gregorio 95 on list, 40 on Searcher.
It does seem like a fairly truculent response to a legitimate question. Based on Jeff’s winsearcher list, above, it appears that his list is pretty significantly overpriced. I’m guessing he’s figuring on losing $50 on you EVEN IF you pay his outrageous corkage.
Re the PR agency, this thread is what I would think they would not want to happen / be seen.
The easiest way to prevent corkage is to disallow it. (Also an easy way to discourage wine lovers, who also love food and tend to be reasonably affluent, from attending). The second easiest way is to have a well-selected, well-priced wine list. If a restaurant has an obnoxiously priced list and allows corkage, what do they expect?
For whatever reason, a lot of restaurants seem to prefer the third option, “Allow it, but be really obnoxious about it.” You’d think these places would want to consider option #1 instead.
Certainly not sticking up for Batali (or Joe Bastianich) in any way, and over priced winelists and lack of/high corkage already do deeply affect my restaurant choices. But this is Vegas and looking at the menu, a grilled pork chop costs $45. So if you are a wine drinker choosing to dine there, yeah I imagine they are looking to make $50+ off you in wine. Most restaurants in Seattle are 2x+ retail, granted at lower price points, so seeing 3x retail at this place doesn’t surprise me. I’ll never go there, but i’m not the audience.
And people who don’t drink or don’t drink wine are a different demographic to them i’m sure, and just factor into the average.
“@Mariobatali what’s up with the $50 corkage fee @ B& B. Outrageous!” does NOT qualify as a “legitimate question” in my mind. It’s clear that, as a tweet, it was an attempt to humiliate Batali in a public fashion, and therefore, it’s not surprising such an effort elicited a contentious response (which, of course, is not to defend the wisdom of such).
There is a great interview with Danny Meyer and Charlie Rose:
I have brought wine and bought wine at all of his restaurants. They treat your byob like gold. Its a pleasure to dine at this places, and he seems to have a pretty healthy business on his hands. Yes, the tweet was a little obnoxious, but I think Mario might be missing the big picture here.
Looking at the “big picture,” it’s obvious that MB is leveraging his name in a wide variety of ways. He’s on TV, he’s got restaurants, he’s got books, he’s got wines (La Mozza), he’s got sauces, etc., etc., etc. He’s become famous, and he’s going to extract whatever value he thinks he can extract from his fame. No surprises there.
So you take one of “his” restaurants and you realize that he’s not the one cooking. Does anyone think MB is personally going to each of his restaurants and supervising all of the staff in the preparation of every dish?
Pretty obviously, you have people who are willing to pay a significant premium to dine in one of “his” restaurants; whether it’s paying more for the dishes, more for the wines off the list, or more for corkage. If people are willing to pay the premium to dine in one of “his” restaurants, then that’s their call. It doesn’t really appeal to me though.
Bruce
I think it’s a legitimate question. Whether Batali is humiliated by it is more a function of the effect of making the policy “more” public. I hope it burns on the way down.
I’m curious why some folks think allowing no corkage is a better option than charging a high fee. At least with the high fee, I have an option. Otherwise, I’m just stuck with the list, period. Of course, in my case the $50 fee is so high I’d probably just opt for no wine, which would reduce my enjoyment to the point that I’d probably not even walk in the door in the first place, but I’m sure I’m part of a small group. He doesn’t need my business to make ends meet.
I think that is the point some of us would make. If a restaurant feels the need to wave their list in your face with such a high fee are they not in effect saying they do not want you to bring wine into their restaurant and want you to order off the list? Why not just say so instead of pretending corkage is an option they care for and not cynically make it a profit grab.
This is childish. If a restaurant is profiting from selling food, and food alone, it should allow corkage at a reasonable fee. $50 is unreasonable, and the same as disallowing the practice. I would not dine there, if only because of this obnoxiousness.
And I prefer to bring my own wine for reasons besides price. Namely, provenance. Plus lately,a lot of nicer places I’ve been to lately are serving good wines way too young.
Here’s what I don’t understand about high corkage: The only people I know who care about corkage at nice restaurants are wine geeks (I’m excluding the cheap Indian BYOB places that aggressively target students who want to bring in beer and yellowtail). To everyone else, it would never even occur to them to bring their own wine. But setting corkage high when you already have high markups on the list just tells wine geeks/collectors not to show up. I don’t see how that creates any additional marginal revenue. The only people who care about corkage will be driven away, while it will have no effect on anyone else’s behavior. And the people you’re driving away are the type of people who tend to care a lot about food and are willing to spend a fair amount of money on it, and are likely to spread the word if they have a good experience. How does that make sense?
Corey–I’m by no means defending the high corkage policy, but let me suggest a theory. The restaurant would really prefer a customer base that generates the most revenue/profit per turn, meaning that they’ll buy the overpriced wines off the list. Now, they could just say “no corkage allowed” but then they suspect they catch too much grief for not letting people bring in their special bottles. So they “compromise” with a $50 corkage fee that discourages many BYOB parties.
Bruce
Bruce, this makes sense only if the restaurant is busy enough that it can replace the byo people who are scared off by the high corkage fee with others who will order off the list. I get this in Vegas, where they’re catering mostly to tourists and high-rollers and there’s a pretty much never-ending stream of demand. It makes a lot less sense to me anywhere else.
Another issue is this: if the profit margin a restaurant makes off wine sales is so vital, that just tells you how overpriced the list is.
A high fee is fine - you can choose to pay it or not, and to dine there or not. What’s not fine is when the fee is high because the restaurant doesn’t like corkage and will express that dislike to you in some obnoxious or passive-aggressive way if you avail yourself of the policy and pay the fee. It would be better not to allow it at all.
I agree with Keith’s comments, although I would add that any restaurant attitude re: BYOB is wrong regardless of the amount of the corkage fee. You’re in the service business…
Bruce
For a high end restaurant I don’t see $50 as obnoxious. Now for me this would be a special dining establishment (maybe not this one but of similar type ect), and to this type of place Im not going to bring anything under around a $100 bottle of wine. Most every high end restaurant is going to charge $200+ for that type of wine, so to me it’s still a value. If you dine here on a regular basis and arent taking trophy wines in then I can see why the $50 is possibly offensive, but a party of two still isnt getting out with much less of a markup even if you bought cheaply from the list .
A restaurant should charge what they want. They just shouldn’t be pissy about it when called out on it.
I very rarely visit restaurants with high corkage rates.