Many restuarants are independent and probably pay the maximum cost price for wine. Unsplash
Several readers of both The Real Review and my The Full Bottle column in the Good Weekend magazine have written in lately with complaints about the high prices being charged for wine in restaurants post pandemic.
This is one:
“We visited a new restaurant recently and really enjoyed the experience. The food was great.
“The wine list was very small and that’s OK. There was only one shiraz and we ordered it. A quick Google revealed that the bottle that could be purchased at Dan Murphy’s for AUD $16 was marked up to AUD $75 on the restaurant wine menu.
“I realise restaurant wines are usually marked up a lot but this seems wildly excessive. Am I right?”
My reply was along these lines:
Post-COVID, restaurants are charging higher prices than ever for wine. And hardly any of the higher-end restaurants allow BYO these days, so they have us in a headlock!
That mark-up is on the high side but not unusual in the present climate.
At normal calculations, the wine would have cost the retailer (or restaurant) about AUD $8, and with taxes and profit margin would retail at about AUD $16.
So assuming the same cost price to that restaurant, they have marked it up by a factor of nearly 10.
However, Dan Murphy’s don’t apply a standard markup, and they are constantly shifting prices and offering specials. Prices are a moving target. Their
This Article was originally published on The Real Review
