Restaurant vs Wine Bar pricing comparison (2024)

Most people are aware that restaurants mark up the prices of their bottled wine significantly. But are you aware that thestandard restaurant mark-up for a medium range bottle of wine is 300% on retail?A quick Google will confirm that for you but here’s a couple of recent sources I found:

The Real Review – Mark-ups on Restaurant Wine – Huon Hooke 4 Oct 2023
Provi – Guide to Pricing Restaurant Wine – Corey Hines 6 Sept 2023

“Starting with 200-300% over retail is a generally accepted mark-up standard for wine in restaurants.If a wine retails for $20, you should look to price itsomewhere in the $60 -$80 range.For rare, vintage or otherwise specialty wine options, mark-ups can be significantly higher (into the 400-500% range). This baseline approach to pricing wine is a universally profitable model…”

Interesting that Corey highlights the $60-$80 range, because that’s where most diners choose their wine in restaurants, as my recent discussions with our customers have confirmed. What that means is that you are really drinking $20 retail wine with your lovely restaurant meal.

Unfortunately, like most things, wine quality is closely related to price. To get to a wine with the quality to properly match the food you are enjoying, you need to be looking in the $60-$80retailrange.

But you are not going to choose the $70 retail wine in a restaurant (I certainly don’t and never have, even before I owned a wine store 😊), because it will be priced atover $200, well outside most people’s budgets.
That same bottle of wine in our Wine Bar (we have a big range at that level) will cost you$90(including our $20 corkage);less than half price. You can then enjoy a premium quality wine withour extensive range of quality food offering.

So I encourage you to choose bottled wine from the store in our Wine Bar, rather than from our “By the Glass” list.Our by the glass list isgreat value, and a far more interesting offering to those of other “wine bars”,but quite frankly it is still made up of largely “entry level” wine.

You don't have to leave the comfort of our Wine Bar, nor be daunted by the huge range of wines in our store. If you tell your waiter what type of wine you are looking for, and your price range, we can bring a few bottles into the Wine Bar and chat about a great choice for you.

If you don’t drink the whole bottle, take the rest home. We’ll even “argon gas” the bottle for you, so that it will last at least another week.

The value of our bottled wine compared to restaurants applies across the whole price spectrum, not just “expensive” wines. The gap gets bigger as the price increases (because the corkage largely drops out of the equation) but we guarantee you will save at least $20 per bottle, even on “entry level” wine.

Popular varieties such as Pinot Noir, Shiraz and Pinot Grigio, even at lower price points, are a bigger saving in our Wine Bar. Restaurants price those types of wine higher because they know that’s what people will choose regardless of price, as they are familiar with them.

Also beware of the “second cheapest” bottle in a particular category on a restaurant Wine List. Restaurants are aware that is the wine a high percentage of customers choose (been guilty of that one myself, particularly in high-end restaurants), so you might find it is the one in that category with the biggest mark-up, and hence the worst value.

Our Bottled pricing is totally transparent. A simple $20 charge per bottle is applied to the take-away price. You can see that bottle in the store (and purchase it after you have tried it in the Wine Bar);even our “By the Glass” wines. Be careful of wines on restaurant Wine Lists that you have never seen, as they are only available to the “on-premise” trade, so that you can’t price compare.

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