Red wine sales are tanking at SF restaurants: ‘Never seen anything like this’
Red wine sales are tanking at SF restaurants: ‘Never seen anything like this’
by FatherEsmoquin
41 Comments
flitcroft
Maybe restaurants should stop charging 600% markup on wine.
Sea_Yesterday_8888
Same thing happened in 2008. I was waiting tables before, during and after that recession. People still dined out plenty, but check averages dropped big time. We went from great wine sales to rarely selling bottles. It was the business tables where it really showed. No one was allowed to put bottles on those corporate cards.
R3dd1tUs3rNam35
My hot take is that the public misunderstanding about Merlot after Sideways led to people consuming red wines they wouldn’t otherwise like and that convinced them they don’t like all red wines.
Merlot is relatively low in tannins, especially compared to Cabernet Sauvignon, and since the most common refrain from people who say they don’t like reds is that they’re too tannic, they’re missing out and getting the wrong idea about wines generally.
LeGrandeGnomewegian
J. Lohr at any Grocery Store or Big Box Retailer: $10-13/bottle
J. Lohr at almost any restaurant: $15/glass or $60-75/bottle
Restaurants: “mUh SaLeS! nEvEr SeEn AnYtHiNg LiKe ThIs!”
Raiderman112
Wineries and restaurants are going to have to be creative. Many restaurants have specials like Wine Wednesday where a large selection of wines are half off. Many offer tastings with a low or no cost that showcase some high value wines.
People are just not going to pay the kind of prices that are on restaurant wine lists any longer.
interstellar-dust
lol, drop the prices then. Good at restaurants is expensive in SF too.
beigechrist
How much of this is a sort of elite/well-moneyed version of “the cost of eggs is getting outrageous”?
Character-Plankton83
Wine sales just down bad generally. Like 25% across the board retail and wholesale wise. It’s not been a good a year.
Chr1s7ian19
With the increasing wealth gap, places are soon gonna realize that the elite can only buy so much shit and only be at one restaurant at a time
ppdaazn23
Well when they charge you $15-18 a glass for a $10 wine bottle, people at this point rather go spend it on a nicer one to drink at home
basic_asian_boy
There’s a restaurant in Monterey area called Passionfish. I always order bottle(s) when dining there because their wine menu is huge, interesting, and priced at retail. If other restaurants followed their approach to selling wine, they might not have so much difficulty selling it.
winelover08816
People aren’t NOT going to restaurants, only cutting down on the drinking. This is a generational thing building for a while. Younger people aren’t drinking as much wine, or alcohol in general. Tellingly the “mocktail” is the only category to rise and, hey, overpriced juice and soda is still moving if you give it a fancy name.
FitzwilliamTDarcy
We’re foodies and used to spending well into the 3-figures pp for fine dining. Occasionally 4-figures. So it’s not like we’re averse in general to spending $ on food and wine.
But our usual go-to at good but not particularly special restaurants is: round of martinis, apps, mains, bottle of wine.
Shit’s gotten so completely ridiculous that we could have had the above for $250-300 (total, for two) not all that long ago. It’s now become $400-500. For the same stuff. And sometimes smaller portions.
It’s offensive. SO much so that we started having the martinis at home. That cut about $75 (!!!) from the bill. Then we went on to each milk one glass of wine rather than sharing a bottle. That cut another $100ish from the bill, depending. So now the total is back to around $300 or whatever. But the overall experience is so much lesser (don’t even get me started on service…) that we just go out less.
So, congratulations restaurants.
ETA: oh and similarly don’t even get me started on the “sorry we’re out of the wine you ordered but can suggest this other wine” which oh by the way unless you ask they will neglect to mention that it happens to be 40% more expensive and no they won’t spot you the difference
Pokoparis
Charge less lol
CesQ89
Shrinkflation hit hard so doesn’t make sense to even buy a single glass of wine to enjoy with your meal.
Used to be 187.5 ML per glass so 4 glasses per bottle but restaurants and bars trying to squeeze 5 glasses per bottle so 150 ML per glass. Some places are even greedier than that.
dherndo2
I ate at a steakhouse in SF two weeks ago and the corkage was $35 and they decanted it for me…makes way more sense to do that than get something off their list.
Open_Substance5833
In addition to all the comments on markup, and the relative value in cocktails and beer (which I agree with), to me the biggest annoyance of restaurant wines is that 90% of reds you see on wine lists are nowhere near maturity. That is not a good product look for the restaurant (300-400% markup on a wine that will reach peak in 5-10 years). I’m happy to pay the $50 corkage or have a cocktail or two.
Side note – I do kind of enjoy (ironically) when restaurants reserve the really obscene markups for some of the “favorites” on this sub…..caymus, belle glos, silver oak etc…..
Yachts-Dan92
Hmm…
antisara
On the other hand I’ll buy wine more when I’m out cus honestly it’s a better deal a lot of the time. I was at a stupid venue where all the beers were 12 bucks, the cocktails 15 and the wine was EIGHT DOLLARS. The choice was clear and it was a solid pour as well.
nel_wo
Wine markup is insane and from a consumer standpoint, stupid. Where I live, there are 4 to 5 major distributors that restaurants sources from and you can almost always contact them and order from them directly for 10-20% discount. Most restaurants will do the same and order directly from distributors and get closer to 30% to 50% discount (i know this because my friends are all bar managers to oversee the ordering of all wines and liquor) but mark up 300-600% just to “open” the god damn bottle as if I can’t do it myself.
Many of the wines in restaurant menu consumers can find and buy at local wine shops, sure, there are definitely harder to find or rarer wines restaurants offer, but those are almost always priced out of what general public can afford.
If I go to a wine tasting or get 3 other wine friends and buy 3 cases, we can almost always get 25% discount and another case for 50% off. Which basically is 30-35% off or restaurant pricing. Consumers, especially millennial, are very aware of pricing and we aren’t dumb enough to pay $225 for a wine that actually cost $75.
I would be a millionnaire if i get $10 for each time I saw a restaurant selling a typical rioja marques de caceres grand Reserva for $50-$70, when kroger sells $29.99 retail or buy 6 for 30% off.
So yea. I never order wine when I got out for drinks. I usually order cocktails because it takes a bit more work to make those drinks than pouring something out of a bottle
No_Eggplant6269
Good the prices are ludicrous. For the price of an average wine at restaurants now I can go buy 4-5 bottles at the store.
whiskyandguitars
I pretty much never buy alcohol when I go out to eat unless it’s an extremely special occasion.
Restaurants just charge way too damn much. It’s not worth it. They could still make a decent profit and not shaft their customers.
I also like whiskey and most restaurants charge anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of what an entire bottle costs for just a 1oz pour. If it’s a hard to find bottle, they will charge MSRP or more for a pour. It’s absolutely insane.
ginleygridone
My wife and I rarely drink wine out because of the egregious markup.
Fuddle
This is due to a number of factors all hitting at the same time. People are drinking less, inflation costs on food, businesses cutting back on spending, and at least according to a few spirits companies I’ve spoken to: Ozempic.
dualfollower
… notice that the keyword in the article is “red”; white wine sales are booming, because people believe that because they’re eating lighter, that they should be drinking lighter; just a heads up for anybody that doesn’t live on the West Coast; if you think your wine mark ups are high in the restaurants there, you need to spend a little time in North Texas or Houston, because traditionally where most eateries will usually do double or triple the retail price, most of Texas it’s quadruple…
TheBobInSonoma
This is what happens with inflation. If people cut back enough, you’ve got a recession. So far we’ve avoided it.
Weightcycycle11
I just bring my own and pay the corkage fee.
PGrace_is_here
“$6 1-ounce pours”
The growers have been talking about waning popularity for two years.
Vitis35
They wanted me to discount my case to $54 only to see it on the menu for $45/bottle $8/glass. I’m done with restaurants. I won’t sell it to them.
Gazoo382
If you start talking about inflated wine prices and corkage fees at a nice restaurant you might as well complain that the shrimp pesto was $38…. Ha. I don’t mind the markups because I can generally find one that isn’t too bad but the corkage fee is crazy if it’s more than $35. Oh and don’t forget about your $200 gratuity !
glorifiedvirus
Wine is falling out of fashion and people are poor
LexeComplexe
Well when a 25$ bottle at the store is upwards of $80 in the restaurant yeah, I’m not gonna buy any of that fuckin wine
Cucckcaz13
No shock, wines too fucking expensive.
Li1_nepiti2
Wine is overrated
TheFuckingHippoGuy
There’s also less business meals happening where you’re taking out clients on the company dime. For Tech, there’s still a ton of business that’s conducted locally here, but it’s a lot less after COVID because of people going remote and companies now focusing on actual profitablity rather than the “grow at all costs” era of the 2010s.
LeeroyJNCOs
Don’t automatically add an 18% service charge then have the balls to add a 22/25/28% tip line, and I’ll feel like spending more.
LemonPress50
People enjoy red wine but when they see the price, they recognize there’s no enjoyment if they get a headache. Who wants to pay to get a headache?
I had customers that got headaches from red wine. They told me after drink my wines that they didn’t get headaches from my wines. I imported only organic and biodynamic wines. I learned of the headaches after the fact. They didn’t tell me up front.
One client only drank reds from The Rhone, Burgundy, or Bordeaux and some Italian reds. He put down wines in his cellar that he drank through the years without getting headaches. Over time, the same wines became his headache wines. I unintentionally solved the riddle for him and others.
I suspect it’s the lack of chemical residue from any of Carbaryl, Cypermethrin, Iprudione, Malathion, Myclobutanil, and Procymidone that caused the problem. No such residues are permitted in organic wines and they are tested before being released for sale to the public in Ontario.
Heath concerns don’t represent the some reason for the drop in sales of red wine. Proof once more that anytime there is a change there is an opportunity to make money. It won’t cost the restaurant much to offer some organic wines. Give it a try.
Worried_Scratch_2854
Bottles in Argentina, Spain, France, Italy, all Charge a markup of 10-50%. In the US, we charge 3x. So dumb! Not paying that shit
Thehawkiscock
Just chiming in – I am probably on the lower end of income here, but I still enjoy a good red. I’ll drink at home. The price of a glass or bottle going out is terrible. Don’t charge 125% of the bottle price for a single glass
nior_labotomy
I can speak for SF, or the restaurant side. Work in retail in the Midwest, and starting in July, our sales fell off a cliff and haven’t recovered. A few of my colleagues on the bar/restaurant side can say the same thing.
We’re down 10/12 transactions per day over last year. Dollars down too. It’s just like people en masse around here just said, we done. like turning off a tap.
764knmvv
we bring wine with us all the time.. often they skip corkage depending on the place, and its always a better deal then the 3/4 x markup which i just cannot stomach
41 Comments
Maybe restaurants should stop charging 600% markup on wine.
Same thing happened in 2008. I was waiting tables before, during and after that recession. People still dined out plenty, but check averages dropped big time. We went from great wine sales to rarely selling bottles. It was the business tables where it really showed. No one was allowed to put bottles on those corporate cards.
My hot take is that the public misunderstanding about Merlot after Sideways led to people consuming red wines they wouldn’t otherwise like and that convinced them they don’t like all red wines.
Merlot is relatively low in tannins, especially compared to Cabernet Sauvignon, and since the most common refrain from people who say they don’t like reds is that they’re too tannic, they’re missing out and getting the wrong idea about wines generally.
J. Lohr at any Grocery Store or Big Box Retailer: $10-13/bottle
J. Lohr at almost any restaurant: $15/glass or $60-75/bottle
Restaurants: “mUh SaLeS! nEvEr SeEn AnYtHiNg LiKe ThIs!”
Wineries and restaurants are going to have to be creative. Many restaurants have specials like Wine Wednesday where a large selection of wines are half off. Many offer tastings with a low or no cost that showcase some high value wines.
People are just not going to pay the kind of prices that are on restaurant wine lists any longer.
lol, drop the prices then. Good at restaurants is expensive in SF too.
How much of this is a sort of elite/well-moneyed version of “the cost of eggs is getting outrageous”?
Wine sales just down bad generally. Like 25% across the board retail and wholesale wise. It’s not been a good a year.
With the increasing wealth gap, places are soon gonna realize that the elite can only buy so much shit and only be at one restaurant at a time
Well when they charge you $15-18 a glass for a $10 wine bottle, people at this point rather go spend it on a nicer one to drink at home
There’s a restaurant in Monterey area called Passionfish. I always order bottle(s) when dining there because their wine menu is huge, interesting, and priced at retail. If other restaurants followed their approach to selling wine, they might not have so much difficulty selling it.
People aren’t NOT going to restaurants, only cutting down on the drinking. This is a generational thing building for a while. Younger people aren’t drinking as much wine, or alcohol in general. Tellingly the “mocktail” is the only category to rise and, hey, overpriced juice and soda is still moving if you give it a fancy name.
We’re foodies and used to spending well into the 3-figures pp for fine dining. Occasionally 4-figures. So it’s not like we’re averse in general to spending $ on food and wine.
But our usual go-to at good but not particularly special restaurants is: round of martinis, apps, mains, bottle of wine.
Shit’s gotten so completely ridiculous that we could have had the above for $250-300 (total, for two) not all that long ago. It’s now become $400-500. For the same stuff. And sometimes smaller portions.
It’s offensive. SO much so that we started having the martinis at home. That cut about $75 (!!!) from the bill. Then we went on to each milk one glass of wine rather than sharing a bottle. That cut another $100ish from the bill, depending. So now the total is back to around $300 or whatever. But the overall experience is so much lesser (don’t even get me started on service…) that we just go out less.
So, congratulations restaurants.
ETA: oh and similarly don’t even get me started on the “sorry we’re out of the wine you ordered but can suggest this other wine” which oh by the way unless you ask they will neglect to mention that it happens to be 40% more expensive and no they won’t spot you the difference
Charge less lol
Shrinkflation hit hard so doesn’t make sense to even buy a single glass of wine to enjoy with your meal.
Used to be 187.5 ML per glass so 4 glasses per bottle but restaurants and bars trying to squeeze 5 glasses per bottle so 150 ML per glass. Some places are even greedier than that.
I ate at a steakhouse in SF two weeks ago and the corkage was $35 and they decanted it for me…makes way more sense to do that than get something off their list.
In addition to all the comments on markup, and the relative value in cocktails and beer (which I agree with), to me the biggest annoyance of restaurant wines is that 90% of reds you see on wine lists are nowhere near maturity. That is not a good product look for the restaurant (300-400% markup on a wine that will reach peak in 5-10 years). I’m happy to pay the $50 corkage or have a cocktail or two.
Side note – I do kind of enjoy (ironically) when restaurants reserve the really obscene markups for some of the “favorites” on this sub…..caymus, belle glos, silver oak etc…..
Hmm…
On the other hand I’ll buy wine more when I’m out cus honestly it’s a better deal a lot of the time. I was at a stupid venue where all the beers were 12 bucks, the cocktails 15 and the wine was EIGHT DOLLARS. The choice was clear and it was a solid pour as well.
Wine markup is insane and from a consumer standpoint, stupid. Where I live, there are 4 to 5 major distributors that restaurants sources from and you can almost always contact them and order from them directly for 10-20% discount. Most restaurants will do the same and order directly from distributors and get closer to 30% to 50% discount (i know this because my friends are all bar managers to oversee the ordering of all wines and liquor) but mark up 300-600% just to “open” the god damn bottle as if I can’t do it myself.
Many of the wines in restaurant menu consumers can find and buy at local wine shops, sure, there are definitely harder to find or rarer wines restaurants offer, but those are almost always priced out of what general public can afford.
If I go to a wine tasting or get 3 other wine friends and buy 3 cases, we can almost always get 25% discount and another case for 50% off. Which basically is 30-35% off or restaurant pricing. Consumers, especially millennial, are very aware of pricing and we aren’t dumb enough to pay $225 for a wine that actually cost $75.
I would be a millionnaire if i get $10 for each time I saw a restaurant selling a typical rioja marques de caceres grand Reserva for $50-$70, when kroger sells $29.99 retail or buy 6 for 30% off.
So yea. I never order wine when I got out for drinks. I usually order cocktails because it takes a bit more work to make those drinks than pouring something out of a bottle
Good the prices are ludicrous. For the price of an average wine at restaurants now I can go buy 4-5 bottles at the store.
I pretty much never buy alcohol when I go out to eat unless it’s an extremely special occasion.
Restaurants just charge way too damn much. It’s not worth it. They could still make a decent profit and not shaft their customers.
I also like whiskey and most restaurants charge anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of what an entire bottle costs for just a 1oz pour. If it’s a hard to find bottle, they will charge MSRP or more for a pour. It’s absolutely insane.
My wife and I rarely drink wine out because of the egregious markup.
This is due to a number of factors all hitting at the same time. People are drinking less, inflation costs on food, businesses cutting back on spending, and at least according to a few spirits companies I’ve spoken to: Ozempic.
… notice that the keyword in the article is “red”; white wine sales are booming, because people believe that because they’re eating lighter, that they should be drinking lighter; just a heads up for anybody that doesn’t live on the West Coast; if you think your wine mark ups are high in the restaurants there, you need to spend a little time in North Texas or Houston, because traditionally where most eateries will usually do double or triple the retail price, most of Texas it’s quadruple…
This is what happens with inflation. If people cut back enough, you’ve got a recession. So far we’ve avoided it.
I just bring my own and pay the corkage fee.
“$6 1-ounce pours”
The growers have been talking about waning popularity for two years.
They wanted me to discount my case to $54 only to see it on the menu for $45/bottle $8/glass. I’m done with restaurants. I won’t sell it to them.
If you start talking about inflated wine prices and corkage fees at a nice restaurant you might as well complain that the shrimp pesto was $38…. Ha. I don’t mind the markups because I can generally find one that isn’t too bad but the corkage fee is crazy if it’s more than $35. Oh and don’t forget about your $200 gratuity !
Wine is falling out of fashion and people are poor
Well when a 25$ bottle at the store is upwards of $80 in the restaurant yeah, I’m not gonna buy any of that fuckin wine
No shock, wines too fucking expensive.
Wine is overrated
There’s also less business meals happening where you’re taking out clients on the company dime. For Tech, there’s still a ton of business that’s conducted locally here, but it’s a lot less after COVID because of people going remote and companies now focusing on actual profitablity rather than the “grow at all costs” era of the 2010s.
Don’t automatically add an 18% service charge then have the balls to add a 22/25/28% tip line, and I’ll feel like spending more.
People enjoy red wine but when they see the price, they recognize there’s no enjoyment if they get a headache. Who wants to pay to get a headache?
I had customers that got headaches from red wine. They told me after drink my wines that they didn’t get headaches from my wines. I imported only organic and biodynamic wines. I learned of the headaches after the fact. They didn’t tell me up front.
One client only drank reds from The Rhone, Burgundy, or Bordeaux and some Italian reds. He put down wines in his cellar that he drank through the years without getting headaches. Over time, the same wines became his headache wines. I unintentionally solved the riddle for him and others.
I suspect it’s the lack of chemical residue from any of Carbaryl, Cypermethrin, Iprudione, Malathion, Myclobutanil, and Procymidone that caused the problem. No such residues are permitted in organic wines and they are tested before being released for sale to the public in Ontario.
Heath concerns don’t represent the some reason for the drop in sales of red wine. Proof once more that anytime there is a change there is an opportunity to make money. It won’t cost the restaurant much to offer some organic wines. Give it a try.
Bottles in Argentina, Spain, France, Italy, all
Charge a markup of 10-50%. In the US, we charge 3x. So dumb! Not paying that shit
Just chiming in – I am probably on the lower end of income here, but I still enjoy a good red. I’ll drink at home. The price of a glass or bottle going out is terrible. Don’t charge 125% of the bottle price for a single glass
I can speak for SF, or the restaurant side. Work in retail in the Midwest, and starting in July, our sales fell off a cliff and haven’t recovered. A few of my colleagues on the bar/restaurant side can say the same thing.
We’re down 10/12 transactions per day over last year. Dollars down too. It’s just like people en masse around here just said, we done. like turning off a tap.
we bring wine with us all the time.. often they skip corkage depending on the place, and its always a better deal then the 3/4 x markup which i just cannot stomach