Do You Bring Your Own Wine to Restaurants?
 

I have been bringing my wine and paying the corkage fee lately. I find that paying the 10-15 dollar corkage fee is not to exorbitant(sp) I drink much better wine for less money.
Sometimes when you buy an extra bottle they waive the corkage fee. Sometimes if you give the server a taste they waive the corkage fee. $25.00-30.00 corkage pisses me off.
Another thing that p's me off is when the server pours the wine, I like to do it myself.
They always seem to pour way too much in the glass.:cool:

I have seen it done(mostly in surrounding states), but I don't do it. It is like paying for the wine twice.

My $40.00 wine is actually 50-55 dollars, but the same wine would be 80-120 in the restaurant, and most likely is not on the list

It is only fair that you pay a corkage fee, since that is the business model that restaurants operate with in the US.

In France this is not the case, in any decent restaurant the food and wine are expertly matched, so there is no need to bring your own. Also the markup is quite a bit lower in my experience in any place that caters to a French audience.

I will in the future now that it is becoming 'acceptable' to restaurants. As Minkoff alludes, the biggest problem with a North American wine list is the age of the wine. I often have to resort to wines 5 years younger than I would drink at home & pay 2 - 3 times the price.

And rpkesq: the selection of French wines in many NA restaurants has gone from mediocre to abysmal. C'est dommage.

Ian

I bring wine only if I am sure it is not on the wine list. I always offer the owner and/or sommelier a taste. I'm not offended if the waiter pours, as that is what they are trained to do. For restaurants that we go to a lot, they tend to waive the corkage. Almost all waive the corkage if you buy a bottle.

A $10-20 corkage fee is totally fair. It is lost margin for the restaurant, covers cost of glass use, washing and breakage, and the small labor component of opening and serving. I also increase my tip amount to make up for the loss of the wine revenue - that's not the waiter's fault.

Some corkage fees are specifically designed to be putative/discouraging. I think The French Laundry charges $100 - but seriously, there's really nothing you could bring that wouldn't have an equal or better on their list.

There is a real movement to lower markups in the restaurants. I know of a couple that actually sell our wine for less than our retail price. They find they sell a lot more wine with a <2x markup. That being said, some of our other customers markup 4x. They make a lot more on my wine than we do!

There's a small movement up here in NorCal called the Wine Patrol - fun read.

Illegal here, unless they do not have a license

I'd say $10 corkage is fair if and only if that's 10 total, not 10 on each and every bottle.

Places charge a giant markup on wine - remember, they are buying at wholesale prices. I think many places feel entitled to rip people on the corkage, since they would otherwise rip them on the in house wines.

My friends and I go out drinking -- I mean dining -- nearly every week - often 2x a week. We go where we can avoid the corkage. In exchange we ALWAYS give a good bit of wine to the wait staff. At least a full taste, maybe a full glass. We also leave a BIG tip. If they don't know what it is we explain to them - region; grapes; 1er Cru, Grand Cru, rep. of the maker, notable vineyard, etc.

But if a place persists in charging (OVERcharging) a high corkage, then we are not interested in their pure profit motive. No matter how good the foodis we dump them like a lead balloon. And we let them know why. This+is a real big town or a small city, and word gets around as to which places care about their customers. We're also in the Oregon wine country, so that influences things. We can be up to 12 people so it can be a big hit + or - if the place doesn't care aobut us, then we don't care about them. And vice versa.

I tried that once. The manager asked me to leave. Screw 'em... I'm never going to Jack In The Box again!!

i don't believe for a second the restaurant needs $10-$20 to cover the use and cleaning of the glassware and the waiter/waitress isn't getting paid a dime more to screw up the cork vs. getting me a water.

it's lost profit and that is all it is. IF i could find a local restaurant with no corkage fee and a decent menu i'd frequent it and they would be better off so far as my eating out dollars are concerned.

BUT we don't have decent restaurants here. Even the 'good' ones don't have great wine lists OR charge less than 3x's markup. Granted 3x's is in the neighborhood of what liquor cost should be but wine bottles are just too easy to cost out for the average consumer (as opposed to food items). And nobody carries two pages each of Spanish and Italian reds. WTF?! Yes, yes we know your wine salesman reads Wine Spectator and your owner or bartender realizes that 30 something pseudo-sophisticates gravitate towards purdy labels but how about something off the beaten path???

Hoy!

And Seric put that box on the shelf next to the Sunny D and Hawaian Punch where it belongs, then go buy the following:

1-Matua Sauvignon Blanc ($11)
2-Poppy or Cartlidge & Brown Pinot Noir ($14)

Don't expect a swizzle stick in a glass and you will be pleasantly surprised. Don't worry, you're still in the proverbial wine gutter (with #2 at least) so your 'common man' reputation will be safe;)

Think of it this way...

ANY service oriented business must establish a certain "per sale" income level. You base your finances on the fact that each sale will bring in $XYZ. The restauraunt puts a bottle of wine in that expected income breakdown (assuming it's the type where a bottle of wine is an expected part of the meal).

Now, you as the customer remove that $50 ($100, $150) from the average expected sale. That throws everything off, and they now wasted their time on your table. They could have filled it with a group who bought wine...takes the same time and effort, brings in more revenue. They must add a corkage fee, to keep their per-sale margin stable and strong.

Also, the poor waiter gets stuck on a smaller tip from a smaller bill for the same work. Most people are not nice, and will not add a good tip extra for things like that.

Pazuzu you're saying 'we would like the extra money as there are others out there willing to buy OUR wine'

that is different from 'you didn't pay your share of labor, amortized glass cost and proportionate detergent and water use so here is a corkage fee'

i agree with your point (of course, no mystery there and don also mentioned 'lost margin') however the second statement is silly. somewhere in time some restaurant owner came up with that nonsense to soften the presentation of '...because we want to sell wine to every table and if you insist on bringing your own we'll get our average profit out of you elsewhere'.

I'm not sure I would return to a restaurant where I felt like I had to do that. I would certainly never bring my own on my first visit to a new place, so I guess my answer would be "no". It really is a shame, though, just how few restaurants seem to get this right. I makes or breaks a meal for my wife and I.

I don't like the fees but I don't see how it would be that different from someone bringing Chinese food into an Italian restaurant and wanting the staff to serve the Chinese food to them because they don't have it on the menu. Obviously that statement is a bit extreme but wine is part of the meal and expecting someone to pay $10 to have something served to them that the restaurant makes no money on doesn't seem ridiculous to me.

I drink my wine from a bag.

Depending on the company, I bring my own flask...

When I moved to this town there was a steak house that didn't have a liquor license but you were welcome to bring your own bottle, they'd supply glasses and corkscrew. Perhaps they were too hick to add a corkage fee.
Jim

When I go out to the restaurant I want to try something new. So I have the somelier make a recommendation after telling them my tastes.

If I want to drink a bottle of my wine then I stay home and cook.