For The Love Of Port

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... rkups-fair


Fair and balanced?

Roy Hersh wrote:http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... rkups-fair


Fair and balanced?

Not really... I went out to a fancy steak house in Boston last week and many of the wines were barely double of a good liquor store price, so this article is too general and generic to speak for a whole industry.

I have heard many of excessive wine prices are due to restaurants paying too much for their wine at the time. Many restaurants will haggle on their wine prices if you offer another amount on a wine that does not move often on their list.

A sensible restaurant will perhaps double the wholesale on their lower end wine. (It costs a restaurant quite a bit for you to sit at a table for an hour or so.) Their higher end wines should have a much smaller markup if they have selected their wine list properly so that the wines on it move with some regularity.

Of course, if they are actually cellaring wines with the intention of deliberately aging them, then they have to charge accordingly, and the price will rise over the years at about the same rate as if they had been purchasing aged wines from a commercial cellarer.

Peter,

FYI, the national average (in a 2009 restaurant industry survey in the USA) showed the average markup in a restaurant (this is all inclusive except fast food) for wine is 3.1 times wholesale cost. That means that a particular restaurants wine list may have wines marked up only 2x, but others at 4x. From my experience in the hospitality industry that was always about the number although I remember in the 1980's the number was over 3.5x wholesale. Things have improved as there are lots of restaurants willing to close the gap nowadays. I used to always try to hit 2.5x wholesale or a wine cost of 40% which had me in deep water with the owner who wanted me to run a lower 33% wine cost. I told him to give me one year at the lower markups to prove that our top line sales would make up for the difference in our margins. It worked big time as our wine sales were about 12% higher that very first year AND we sold quite a bit more of our "expensive" wines.

I expect and think I typically see 100% markup over retail. I take greater interest when I see less than this.

we went tot he black cat in boulder. They had La Crau, and not even 2007, I think it was 2006, for $190!!!!! are you kidding me? almost a three multiplier. I think we had a $15 bottle of something for $42.


And this place is rated as "one of the best winelists in colorado". ridiculous.