Revolutionary Wine Pricing
I’m not sure it’s "revolutionary" as they describe it, but it sure is encouraging.
Madeline Triffon is the beverage director for the Matt Prentice Restaurant Group in Michigan. She’s instituted a new wine pricing policy: Wines are priced at 50% above wholesale (the price at which the restaurant buys the wine.
This is pretty unusual and a fantastic value for restaurant wine. Oftentimes you can expect to pay at least 100%, quite often 200% and even 300% above wholesale for a bottle of wine at restaurants.
So what does this mean to Michiganders who venture into the 12 restaurants that make up the Matt Prentice Restaurant Group? In stead of paying $60 a bottle for that Merlot, you now pay $30. In some other restaurants that same bottle could easily go for more.
Wines are marked up heavily in fine dining restaurants, justified by the cost of storing the wine, having educated people to explain and serve them and by the need to have good glassware on hand. The economics of wine in restaurants is really no different than the economics of much else. The higher the cost, the less gets sold. The lower the cost, the more gets sold. I have to assume this new pricing policy represents at least a 50% cut in wine prices. Will they sell more than 50% more wine with lower prices? I hope so. That would be encouraging.
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