Dave Smith wrote:
> Johnny Lobster wrote:
>
>> I have noticed that many restaurants near my home in Denver are
>> raising their wine prices. They are already charging three to four
>> times the retail cost of a bottle. When my local French bistro raised
>> theor prices so that there were no bottles under $30, I stopped going
>> there and let them know why.
>
> How much does the low US dollar have to do with the price increases? The
> low dollar could account for as muich as a 30% increase in their cost of
> buying the wine to stock.

More like an almost 50% increase. It takes $1.46 (today) to buy a Euro.

I was in Colorado 5 years ago and was surprised
> to find acohol so expensive. I was used to paying $21 for 26 oz. bottles
> of liquor in this part of Canada. but in the Denver area they were
> charging $26.95 which made it closer to $34 in my Canadian funds. Beer
> was about 50% more than year, and when translate to Canadian funds it was
> almost double..... and our liquor prices are relatively high.
>
> The last time I ate in one of the local winey restaurants I was shocked
> at the prices. It was bad enough that that their food was overpriced.....
> $14.95 for a bowl of vegetable soup, but the cheapest wine on the list
> was $36. There was a decent selection of wines, but all their own. It is
> not like they had a cellar full of vintage wines that they had to collect
> and store. They get it from their own winery's stock, and sell them in
> the gift shop for $10-20 per bottle.
>
> For some reason, restaurants seem to have the impression that they are
> entitled to couge their customers on wine in order to make a profit. When
> they intorduced BYO wine in this provinces the restaurants were allowed
> to charge corkage. Some of them charged a reasonable amount. One Toronto
> restaurant, known for having a good selection on wine, decided that they
> would charge $35. Their reasoning was that when people bring their own
> wine it deprived them of the opportunity to make a profit on wine sales.
> Needless to say, that upon reading that they felt entitled to make $35
> off me for all the work involved in bringing a couple glasses and
> popping the cork I certainly felt no need to take my business there.
>
>> However, recently a Pasqiuni's pizzaria opened in the neighborhood
>> with no bottle over $20 and many around the $11 mark. Shortly after
>> this, Swing Thai lowered their wine prices so that decent bottles can
>> be had for $14. Then another downtown restaurant started offering
>> bottles for half price before 7:00. I hope these are not all
>> coincidental, and that they are trying to compete. Just two weeks ago
>> I ate in a wine bar-restaurant in San Diego, and they had good
>> Australian Shriaz for $7 a bottle.
>
> Wine prices in restaurants around here run from about $18 up, usually
> about a 100% markup. The last time I was in Paris we had an excellent
> bottle of Pinot Noir in a restaurant for $12, A lot of places had three
> course meny meals that included a 1/4 litre of decent wine for under $40.
>