Normal wine mark-ups at restaurants?

WINE TALK
21

iced tea and a polite comment to the server.

22

I suspect the markup on iced tea (which I suspect even more they don’t serve) would be rather more than 10x… [snort.gif]

23

Nobody said 10x retail. Markup is calculated from their (presumably wholesale) cost, so a $7 wholesale btl would retail for $10, and be $70 on the list. Still outrageous, however.

24

yes wine was available retail 14 USD according to Vivino >>>>> 130 UK

almost criminal

25

That’s ridiculous… I know alcohol sales help keep restaurants profitable but what happened to providing value for your customer…

26

This is why beer is becoming a real threat to wine’s restaurant hegemony. The value is far and away superior, as long as restaurants adhere to the antiquated pricing model.

27

There’s a bit of “apples and oranges” here. 14 USD is the price of the bottle retail in the US, but how much is it in the UK?

There’s that little thing called “exchange rate” accounting for ~23 percent of that price difference you describe…

28

Your buddies liked the wine at 130 sterling, so around $160 US. They went onto to Vivino anticipating seeing it at perhaps $50/$60 retail. Instead it’s available at $14. What’s not to like? Hopefully they bought a couple of cases and are toasting their good fortune. Please share the link to this bargainous juice! [cheers.gif]

29

really?

14 USD to 130 UK (160 in USD)

30

that’s a good way to look at it!!!

hahaha

31

https://www.vivino.com/el-porveni-laborum-single-vineyard-finca-rio-seco-malbec/w/1412079?year=2016

32

This reminds me of a story about French Laundry selling Lafage Cotes du Roussillon Bastide miraflorS for $2xx usd

33

https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/laborum+single+vineyard+finca+rio+seco+malbec/2016

Wine Searcher not Pro is showing 1 retailer in USA selling it for $30ish.

34

And it can be had for the equivalent of that in the UK, according to Wine Searcher.

Even at that retail price, the restaurant is charging more than 5x.

35

A few thoughts. First, this is obviously an outlier. As such worth calling out though.
Second, I’ve always marvelled at what seems to be daft business model. But it clearly works as (almost) every restaurant does it, so I’m wrong.
Those four figure bottles on lists, I’d love to know if they are actually in stock, and in what quantity.
“I’d like a bottle of the ‘47 Latour please.”
“I’m sorry sir we’re all out. We had a bit of a run on it last night… You know those JP Morgan guys“
I wonder if they are there partly to make the $250 bottle of St Joseph ($35 at Chicago wine store) seem reasonable.

The basic problem, to me, is a business model that underprices the food and overprices the wine. It seems odd to treat your core product as a loss leader.

36

I just read something really interesting about restaurant pricing.
An article in the Economist about relatively high lunch prices in New York vs London (I think the Big Mac index may be morphing into the Pret Lobster Roll index) … includes this:

Menu pricing starts with a simple rule, says John Buchanan of the consulting arm of Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, a restaurant group: take the cost of ingredients and multiply by three.

Could that be the simple explanation for wine pricing? If 3x ingredient cost works for steak why not for Malbec (Ignoring the lack of chef, dishwasher etc labour on the wine)?

(In fairness the article goes on to explain the next step is basically a check against what the market will bear etc. )

37

In a separate post you used $130.

38

Note though the small print on the Vivino link

According to our users, the average purchase price of this wine is $11.58.

The plot thickens…

39

I remember years back the Sunday Times food writer Michael Winner complaining that he’d spotted a bottle of Bordeaux at Gordon Ramsay’s eponymous flagship restaurant at £1,100 when he himself had just picked up a case of the same at auction at just over £100 a bottle.

I don’t claim any great knowledge of higher end restaurant wine lists but undoubtedly those sufficiently well-heeled to absorb this kind of mark up are - hopefully - making the experience more accessible for the rest of us.

40

2 to 3 times if it’s more than that and the list sux then water.