Teetotallers are freeloading in restaurants. That dawned on me after reading John Lethean on high restaurant wine markups.
Mr Lethlean knows what he is writing about. By his own calculation he spent a million dollars of Rupert Murdoch’s money gleaning the information for his weekly restaurant reviews in The Australian. Now he has retired from that arduous chore he is clearly more aware of the cost of eating out.
In a reminiscence about his career ar the weekend he listed his seven big gripes. Number six focussed on wine ‘… Spending ridiculous amounts on readily available, highly marked-up wines with virtually no value-adding in terms of cellaring, presentation and stemware’.
Legitimate that criticism may be but high markups on wine prices not withstanding, restaurants are no sure fire way to make an exorbitant profit. The alternaive to gaining excessive dollars from selling wine would be to earn more money from higher food prices.
Which brings me to my realisation that the drinkers are subsidising the non-drinkers. Teetotallers are freeloading in restaurants!
Many years ago when a part owner of Nobbs in Canberra’s Manuka I put a little wine shop inside the restaurant. The food menu was a tad more expensive but the wines were the same price as at my other liquor stores. I certainly did not get rich but it seemed to work.
And why shouldn’t it? There are many bring-your-owns surviving around the country chargng no or only modest corkage.
