The Auswine Forum

Santa wrote:When I visit a restaurant of this calibre with the option of BYO, I take along a special bottle of red and am comfortable with a $15-$20 corkage charge. For that, I would expect decantering of the wine and quality stemware.

Kudos to you Daniel for having the gonads to start this informative thread.

Maria

This old chestnut. Is there an anal wordsmith in the house...? Anyone?

I was in this game for a while and I think if you want to charge 50 shekels go for it but provide the appropriate level of service.
lets assume you are a true fine dining establishment.
At that price I would advertise BYO by appointment, where you can discuss the type of wine being delivered, how it compares to the menu on the night, appropriate treatment of the wine etc. Its should be personaly handled by yourself at all times and of course stemware etc is a given.
When people wnat to drink junk wine with your menu you can dissuade them from wasting thier time and yours.

I also echo Ian S

Theres nothing wrong with the price per se its what you are going to deliver on the night that counts.


As for why wine is expensive, the restauranteur has to pay for space and the only part of the place that increase the return for you dollar is the tabled area. Wine storage is non paying area. Muylitply that by the years it takes to establish a decent wine list of cellared wines and bloody oath you want a return on your investment.

Daniel Jess wrote:Point taken well, Popov. After much thinking, I get strong feelings the restaurant industry in Australia teaches it's staff bad habits like being overly firm on matters like you mentioned. I admit I've never really looked at the problem from the many (varied) perspectives given in this thread. Beginning to wonder why I never did before...

Well, it is one of those bizarre things until you think about it. After all, no-one takes a piece of beef fillet to a restaurant and once seated, presents it saying "Rare, please." In that sense, BYO seems an odd concept. And in theory, since the restaurant is cooking the food, they ought to know which wines are best likely to compliment their offerings, and have a wine list constructed appropriately. There should be no need for a guest to bring their own bottle.

But, and there's always a but, in Australia at least, the long and expensive history of alcohol licences, and their inaffordability by small restaurants led to the inevitable rise of the BYO. In an era when only the wealthy ate out, usurious wine marks-ups may well have passed unnoticed (or un-cared about). But when nearly everyone eats out some time these days (and wine drinking is far more widespread), the excessive margins on wine charged by traditional restaurants is so much more obvious. Sure the mark-ups on food are heftier, but there is considerable expertise going into its preparation. Moreover, many of these restaurants are just buying wine to sell within days or weeks, not cellaring large quantities for future years' supply. All the old justifications for large wine mark-ups, in other words, no longer apply.

Oh, except the industry's apparent obsession with 'margins'. It's really no more than simply charging what the market will bear. Wine drinkers are assumed to be wealthier than mineral-water drinking customers, so are charged accordingly. 'Charge what the market will bear.' The assumption is out of date, which is why many people (including me and others on this thread) simply refuse to buy wine at non-BYO restaurants, despite that fact we'd NEVER eat without wine at home, and would sometimes spend serious amounts of individual bottles. Restaurants are doing themselves out of profits they could make on the basis of volumes sold on the grounds that the margins are not high enough. Very silly. I would point to the very high failure rate of restaurants (of which I read!) as proof that the traditional pricing models don't really work anyway.

cheers,
Graeme

and to put a positive angle on this...

- BYO is rare in the UK
- Markups range from occasional 'flat' retail + £10-£20 across the whole range; through typical x2 to x2.5 retail; up to instances of x 4 or more
- IIRC there was someone on wine-pages advising of a £100 corkage fee
- Food typically costs twice as much
- Quality of ingredients (especially meat) is often much lower
=> typically I've always viewed Aussie food as offering value on a straight $ to £ ratio (i.e $30 meal can often match a £30 meal)

There are of course beacons of enlightenment here and some places which really care about the food (and indeed the wine). There's an awful lot of shit here though - so be warned if you're coming over!

Decanting, I'm certain.

The decanter being a wine vessel, decantering would be more like the act of making a decanter or behaving like a decanter, or otherwise engaging in some type of decanter-like activity.

$10 per person or $20 per bottle max, by the way. And I want nice glasses for that, too. Otherwise I'll stick to one or two more savoury beers with my meal, order tap water instead of high margin bottled and the restaurateur losses some margin.

Very interesting topic and one dear to my heart. Been too busy at work to post or even read much lately but can't help but to jump in on this one.

Please note eveything I say is in regard to Sydney restaurants and I have no experience of the Brisbane market although I expect it would not bear the costs of the Sydney market.

I often dine at hatted restaurants and even more often dine at local restaurants. There is a difference on every level, including BYO and what you might expect for a given charge. Some places like Tetsuyas, Marque and Claudes offer and even encourage BYO and have flat per bottle BYO rates and everyone knows what's going on and it's easy. These vary between $20 and $30 a bottle. The interesting thing with these restaurants is that they all have very good wine lists with substantial back vitages of very good wines at not completely outrageous prices. There is often times when I prefer to order from the wine list as they are so good. There are other times when I want to drink my own wine as I've bought it, carefully cellared it and want to have the opportunity to drink it with food of an equal stature.

With other hatted restaurants that 'don't' do BYO, I have never come across one that has outright refused to let me bring a special bottle. With all of these I have rung the restaurant well before-hand, asked to speak to the manager and have negotiated this, as well as the price for the BYO and I think this is important as it really depends on what you are bringing. The most I've ever paid for BYO at one of these types of places was $40 a bottle at Otto on NYE last year. We took two bottles so it cost us $80 in BYO charges. Under the conditions, on that night I was happy to pay that much. Saying that, we were paying $300 a head for the food which was just a blatent NYE rip off anyway as any other night of the year it would have been half that price.

But on other occasions, there have been a variety of rates. One of the reasons I say this is a good thing is that there's been a few major birthdays of late where I've brought along a birth year port. In one case, at Nove, there was about 20 people and the port was shared out between everyone requiring 20 fresh glasses to be provided and washed. The cork was also a challenge to deal with and the port was decanted. They did a fine job and I gave the staff one glass (small but enough for a sip each) to taste which they all really appreciated as none had tasted a wine of that age before. It was a 1945 Penfolds Great Grandfather. In the end they didn't charge us for it at all despite organising for it prior. Saying that, we had spent the whole afternoon there and drunk many bottles off their wine list. I thought this was great and it created a lot of good will and we've been back many times since.

Another occasion at Restaurant 41, similar deal but with a 1947 Seppelts Para port for 30 people. Lots of glasses, very careful pouring to share it all out. They charged us $30 but it was definitely worth it and no problems paying the corkage at all and appropriate for the amount of work. This was all in riedels too.

Another occasion at Restaurant 41, we took a Grange and a Y'Quem. All arranged beforehand at the rate of $35 per bottle corkage and also on the condition we brought wine not on their wine list. The wines were on their list but not those vintages. Given that simialr vintages of Granges were around $1200 and other Y'Quems were around $1500 off the list we had no problems with the corkage. We did however also order a champage from the list and I think a riesling as well. The wines were decanted and all served with riedels.

So they are the examples of the good BYO experiences. Like Popov (and this was a great example of how things go bad and the restauranter doesn't even know) I have rung some middle range places who would not negotiate around the BYO/corkage option and we didn't go there. Simple as that.

Other places have agreed but in the end you're left with feeling slightly ripped off. Even take the example of the last Sydney offine and offlines are special cases because of the sheer volume of wines we bring. There was only 8 people and 15 or 16 bottles of wine. I think the corkage was $10 a bottle but correct me if I'm wrong. In normal circumstances if you've got a table of four and they bring two bottles, this is more than acceptable but when you've got such a large number of bottles, it's a little bit different. The other thing is that we are largely self sufficient and open most of the bottles ourselves and have already double decanted many bottles. We go through a few glasses but there is also a lot of reuse. I think I had three glasses on the night, but by the same token, some people brought their own. So at $10 a bottle corkage, did we get $160 worth of value and service? I think not. If we were 'normal' diners ordering from the wine list, would they have made $160 profit from the wine - unlikely too. I'm not particularly worried about it but might not necessarily recommend it as a place for another offline.

After many long stories, what I'm trying to say is that I think it's more appropriate to negotiate a BYO for the situation. In a mid range restaurant for a couple or table of four or six, $10 a bottle is appropriate and no-one would argue with that. I would argue that anything over this in a mid range resturant would be gouging. In a better restaurant, $20 a bottle may be appropriate but at that price I would completely and totally expect a trained wine waiter or sommelier and proper decanters and stemware. I would only pay over $20 a bottle in a 2 or 3 hatted restaurant with a worthy wine list and sommelier and riedel stemware.

As the most I've ever paid is $40 in Sydney, if someone in Brisbane tried to charge me $50, I'd really think they were taking the piss. I know monghead and others said they'd much prefer to pay $50 to bring their own wine and, I agree, I would prefer to pay that too and have the option but the fact of the matter is that no-one is currently charging anywhere near that at the moment.

I personally think that what is most important to any restaurant is good will over the profit of a single night or bottle or whatever. If a customer brings one special bottle but they order other bottles off the wine list, why charge them anything? Or if you really think you need to, then make it nominal. They are much more likely to come back. If you have a per bottle corkage and there's something like a wine dinner on, it might be more appropriate to charge per head. I loved the idea that BYO was only permitted for 10 year old bottles. I think it's brilliant as it gets away from people bring stuff from the bottle shop next door and should ensure only wine that people really care about gets brought along.

If you really don't want to be a BYO restaurant, just say its BYO by negotiation rather than $50 a bottle which will just put people off. Find out what people want to do and work with them. If it's one special bottle, make it clear that that's OK but only one. Or if people have a decent cellar and want to bring the lot for the night, find out exactly what they are bringing and how much and charge them appropriately based on the service you can provide and your missed opportunity costs from wine sales. In some cases a per bottle charge will be appropriate and others a per person charge. And ask them to be discreet and bring the bottles before if it's an issue. Most people won't mind at all.

Hiya Kris,

Agreed with what you said, but the corkage at the last offline at Elio was actually $5.90 per bottle. They had initially said $9.50 to me, but it was stated at $5.90 on the menus on the night, and this is what we paid. Perhaps the waiter I spoke to on the phone was dyslexic?

Cheers,

Mongehad.

Thanks Kris, that was well put.

GraemeG is right of course - no one would think of taking food .......

However history of the licence schemes of old has created this anomaly and BYO is seen as a"right" in Aus and NZ.

In part this is also made worse by the ridiculous mark-ups on wine. Though this varies, in general it is 100% of retail - and as mentioned, in some restaurants 300%.

My major objection to restaurant lists (not all), is that no care is taken in wine selection and few cellar wine. Indeed, in most, the wine moves through so fast it leave scorch marks on the shelving. I see little reason for the pricing except a major profit source in an industry where profits on the food side, can be very slim indeed.

But let's break this down to dollars, in an example.

Retail mark up is generally 35% from wholesale - except on special of course - or about $4.70 on the average $20. Thus cost price in the order of $13.50.

The restaurant buys at this price therefore marks up 100% ($27.00 + GST = $29.70), profit $13.50.

Now, we have a high street retailer with perhaps 500 to 1000 lines of wine on his shelf, open from say 10am to 9pm, six and seven days a week, with staff, electricity to pay and in most cases relatively low turnover of the inventory - yet making $4.70 quite happily.

We have a restaurant, with a poor inventory (not all) and high turnover of individual lines, making three times that.

Isn't profit a wonderful thing?

Len Evan's Bulletin Place (restaurant) used to charge retail - with the wine list drawn from the wineshop below. Great food, great wine and some hilarious (and memorable) occasions.

KMP - in Ca. you can't carry opened bottle home in the car anyway - so sorry, no kudos for giving them the leftovers (we never have leftovers in Aus or NZ unless the wine is corked or bretty).

Decanting is my vote on the word ... de - cantering reminds me of horse riding, painfilly (sic).

GG

Or possibly falling of a horse at speed, rather ungracefully?

Crikey, this thread is doing my head in.

You can take leftover opened bottles of wine in WA now. (to my understanding).

Grey Ghost wrote:.........
KMP - in Ca. you can't carry opened bottle home in the car anyway - so sorry, no kudos for giving them the leftovers (we never have leftovers in Aus or NZ unless the wine is corked or bretty).
GG

GG,

You can carry an open container but it must not be in the passenger area of the car. A number of states have open container laws, not just CA.

Mike