We dined at a restaurant that recently opened in our neighborhood in Burlingame. We’d heard good things about the restaurant so a group of us decided to celebrate a birthday and an anniversary there. The food was delicious but the wine list was marked up too high and the corkage fee was over the top at $25. Why gouge customers on wine; don’t you want us to return again and again?
Any good wine list should be well thought out and include good wines priced for all pocket books. At the low end there should be some decent tasting and enjoyable wines priced at $30 or under. At this restaurant there were no red wines to be had under $40 and the lowest priced white wine was $38. Worst of all, the markup was huge. Get this: I can buy a bottle of Robert Hall Cabernet Sauvignon at Trader Joe’s for $13. The price for this same wine was $40 on the wine list, a markup of almost three times retail. If you want wine loving-customers to keep coming back, a reasonable markup of 1.5 is just about right for the consumer.