Corkage in restaurants.

[carrust]

Last weekend a group of us went for a meal in a restaurant. When the bill came we discovered that we'd been charged �3-00 corkage/ bottle on wine & �1-50 for beer.I thought that this was a bit excessive. Your comments please.

[Bigeye74]

I've seen someone charged �100 corkage for 2 bottles of pink Champagne. The manager also rebuked the customer for assuming that we wouldn't stock the champagne. So �3 isn't too bad.

[carrust]

Bigeye. The restaurant is cheap & cheerful, where the mains are about �7-50 & the starters �3-00. The food worked-out at about �20-00/ couple, the corkage about �10-00.

[Trotbot]

If you took your own wine and beer, those charges are very reasonable.

[Bigeye74]

Why did you take your own wine and beer? Was the restaurant unliceanced?

[carrust]

Bigeye. The restaurant is licenced. We went there a few months ago, & we were charged �1-50 for wine & nowt for beer.

[Bigeye74]

I may be being ignorant here but why did you take your own booze to the restaurant?

[carrust]

That restaurant serves cream flow beer & tasteless lager. Its wine list is shocking also! I'm not a big drinker, so when I do drink I like to sup decent stuff.

[Buenchico]

Restaurants are free to charge what they like for corkage but they tend to base their charges upon the amount of profit that they'll lose by permitting you to provide your own booze.

For example, a local (i.e. not especially posh) restaurant might buy their wines for around �4 per bottle and sell them �10.50 per bottle. So they expect to make �6.50 profit on each bottle of wine consumed on their premises. They might decide to charge this amount as corkage. Alternatively, they might only charge �5 per bottle, out of goodwill, or �10 per bottle, to discourage customers from bringing their own wine).

A more upmarket restaurant (i.e. the type of place that hosts posh wedding receptions) might buy their wines for �10 per bottle and sell them for �30 per bottle. So a sensible starting point for calculating a corkage charge would be �20 per bottle.

�3 per bottle corkage on wine is exceptionally cheap.

Chris

[carrust]

I can understand corkage on wine. However, �1-50 on a bottle of lager which costs �2-00 is a bit steep. BTW, I'm a Yorkshireman....short arms long pockets etc :-)

[Bigeye74]

After reviewing all the info, seems to me that the corkage fees are fair. Taking beer to a restaurant is a bit cheeky and I imagine that they are losing more than 1.50 on each pint. Also I like to smash up large amounts of tasteless lagr during a meal (not tuborg though, that truly is ****)