Bring Your Own is probably not done by restaurants anywhere near enough. I am thinking of introducing it here and would appreciate your comments below. Bring your own bottle and I will make a corkage charge approximately what I would make on a bottle of house wine. How much do you think that should be? And, what do you think of the idea?
You’ve heard of PYO….what do you think about BYO?
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I think this is a great idea – often you might buy a decent bottle of wine and not have a meal at home worthy of drinking it with! At Fallowfileds you know you will get a meal worthy of your purchase!) Also in modern recessionary times, price is always an issue for many of us. There is nothing more annoying than spending quite a lot of money on a bottle of wine you may not fully appreciate. It also means you can always have exactly the bottle of wine you know you will like. I also think for celebrations – more champagne would be drunk if you could bring your own! I think more people would eat out on this basis – final bill is more predictable when you are not having to consider the unknown – like the price of the wine. As for corkage price – £2.50 per bottle?
Thank you for your kind comments David.
The problem is we would lose revenue stream, but still carry all the cost of keeping a cellar for those that did not BYO. A corkage of £2.50, does not replace the lost profit, although it is pretty fair recompense for opening a bottle, washing and polishing glasses, paying for the disposal etc.. .
However, one would assume the numbers of diners would increase and of course that would increase food profits.
My thoughts were around £7.50 a bottle initially. This partially protects my lost margin and keep this in place until the covers had built up thus replacing lost profit altogether?
Very happy to pay a corkage of £7.50.
As a wine lover i’d actually happily pay more, it is frustrating to never be able to drink a nice mature wine in a restaurant due to the traditional markup ratio which results in a £40 bottle of wine costing >£100.
I appreciate what you are saying Anthony, but I’m not sure I would bother ‘bringing my own’ if there was not a significant pricing differential. Personally, I very, very rarely buy wine for more than £20 a bottle – unless it is impossible to do otherwise. I almost always buy ‘House Wine’ – and if the house wine is rubbish then, in my experience the food is as well – so I probably wouldn’t eat there again anyway! Typically, at home, I would buy something like a Rioja for £8 – £10 – add £7.50 to it and you are pretty close to the price of a house red – so why bother? There are the true wine lovers who spend £40 – 50 on a bottle of wine – but then are they really so price conscious that they would bring their own? Not sure about that – maybe there are people who have fine wine collections of their own who would like to bring it along to a restaurant – but not sure there are many of those – wouldn’t they just buy a decent bottle?
Thanks for the feedback Mark. The problem I have, is that unless I can achieve an increase in footfall by introducing BYO, I am losing part of a revenue stream. I still have the cost of cellarage etc but with reduced turnover.
Another idea is to introduce a cash mark up. Say £10 on house wine. £15 on wines costing between £7-£15 and £20 on all wine over £15 purchase price.
I think BYO is a fantastic option. I lived in South Africa where this was often an option. Those people into their wines could bring a superior wine which might often be prohibitively expensive off a restaurant wine list. The other option of cash mark up I think is smart – these mark ups are too high I think. Why not just a £7 markup on all bottles? In the UK and in Ireland we are tired of such inflated wine prices. I also think the corkage charge you propose is quite low. Maybe also to reduce your own wine stock and add more weekly promos. I saw a very successful restauranteur in S.A. do an ongoing birthday promotion. He would provide a bottle of sparkline wine on the house per 4 people for birthday celebrations – generally as the welcome drink. It was hugely successful. In countries like Germany one is always offered a drink on the house – often too in bars, in Spain at a particular Chinese restaurant we were always offered a "digestif" on the house – why not give some add on value instead of the "discount" culture we have gone into.
Thanks for your thoughts David. Being hypothetical for a mment, there are two reasons I think David, why you might want to pay £9 for a bottle and then £7.50 at a restaurant. Firstly, you will get a better quality of wine than a restaurants "house" at £16.50. Second, you know you will get exactly what you want, that particular restaurant may not have a Rioja as a house, may only have it at £22/£23.
There is a "Corkage club" in London, which embraces many of the top London eateries. Corkage charges are £20 to £25 and very expensive wines nd ports are popular candidates for BYO
Must say, I am warming to it, I know I resent myself paying inflated prices. There is little merit in the arguments we restaurateurs usually use to justify such mark-ups.
The real problem of course is that food only does not make enough money to keep a restaurant in business – they need a second revenue stream.
Then, I think it is time to review the food aspects of restaurants. There are new trends in food. Tasting platters, smaller portions. Also, look at how places like Spain put food on the table. You can order prawns for 3, chicken for 2, family plates. Plates are brought to the table in a time sequence. Kids eat off the adults portions. They are family friendly. Eating out en famille is part of the culture – Many restaurants are finding what they are currently doing is not working – so I think it needs to be changed. Maybe have one night a month when guests just pay you what they think the meal is worth!
I think that a BYO – tarrif isn’t necessarily a good idea. I’ve done BYOs in Birmingham (very cheap and good Indian restaurants) when I was younger and part of the attraction was that I saved a lot. With corkage, it wouldn’t have been worth it and I’d have just bought their wine. I do understand if you say you can’t do this (and the way restaurants have to make money).
For me, as a consumer, the two things I’d like a lot of restaurants to really consider is the whole thing about adding more value with wine to the experience. If you already do this then I apologise in advance, but a lot of restaurants have no idea about marrying food and wine, even a few quite expensive ones. I’m not talking about a full time sommelier, or even recommending expensive wines, but having wine suggestions on menus, or waiters prepped for this can help sell wine, and also encourage customers to come back and be prepared to pay the extra for the wine a second time.
I used to quite regularly go to a small restaurant in Herefordshire, and it was partly that the food was good, but also that the waiter knew a lot about marrying wine and could suggest things that really worked. The result was that I had no hesitation in paying for the wine (and markup) each time I went.
Well I find this a very interesting post Tim. We do already put wine suggestions on each of our menus – these are not from the top of our list, they are from the reasonably priced end.
We select our house wines to go with food and our new restaurant manager, who currently does not have too much understanding of this subject, starts on a recognised wine course shortly.
I think your remarks are predicated upon the basis that the Retaurant’s mark up is reasonable? Too many are charging 4 times the price of the wine….this is what I mean by unreasonable?
I know that you and I have spoken about this Anthony in the past, but after some further thought, perhaps a way which may allow you financial returns, and one which I am considering using, is to hand a free BYO voucher to diners for use within a limited period of time.
This way, you are rewarding those customers who have already shown loyalty, you’ve already made your satisfactory GP on the fact that they’ve been in for a meal, but you’re getting an extra meal out of them, accompanied by the reward of a happier customer who is able to drink their BYO bottle without having to pay a fee?
We’re certainly in agreement that it’s a tricky line to keep both cash strapped customer happy, and at the same time keep us poor restaurateurs who face higher VAT, higher food prices and less spend-keen customers in business.
I don’t really know. I just ask myself if I feel it’s worth it to make a more enjoyable evening of it. Personally, I don’t think that (for instance) £23 for a bottle of Musar Jeune is unreasonable. If it was closer to £30, I’d probably be reluctant.
I’m not sure about markup on more expensive bottles. I rarely pay more than about £25 retail anyway.
It was our discussion that prompted this post Max, as you have probably guessed. Your idea of a BYO voucher is a good one. Could you do this another way, and say first bottle tonight [for each two people] is normal price, 2nd and subsequent bottles are at Wholesale plus say 10%.
I think the feedback has certainly helped me to plan my way forward.