Wine prices in restaurants

'Bring your own bottle' is not happening here in the UK for the obvious reasons. Firstly, the establishment would not sell any wine. Secondly, there's no profit to be made.

The restaurant is there to make money even if it does mean skinning you for the wine. The meal may be fairly reasonable but when you add 2-3 drinks on top, you are then looking at taking out a crisis loan the next day for a tub of Pringles.

I had a glass of wine in a restaurant, 150 ml. They wanted £5 for it. Add tip of 10%, that makes a bottle something like £33..

Quit your jibba jabba fool. Just because the wine in the restaurant is more expensive then the rubbish you get from Morrison's. Honestly, people theses days.

Oh poppycork Mark!

How can a bottle of wine cost a fiver for the restaurant and then the overheads of serving it be another five to ten pounds? They still have to have the chairs if people are going to eat there (unless chairs are for wine drinkers only), and they still need glasses (some people just drink water with their meal - okay, cupped hands for them then!). As for it costing a pub landlord £2.30 to supply a pint of beer - utter nonsense. A more likely scenario is that the brewery chain charges your landlord £2.00 a pint, and it costs 30p to serve, he then whacks on 20p for himself (fair enough!). We're fed up being ripped off. But it's the guy at the top that's ripping us off big time.

I'm fed up with everyone wanting something for nothing.

True, The same bottle of wine in Tescos costs £5, but, they are a much bigger establishemnt, and can cut margins thinner to pay their staff, their heating and electricity bills, their rates and taxes, their property maintenance and their insurances (from property to public liability) they don't need to buy glasses to put the stuff in, and they don't need to pay rip off rates to dispose of the empty bottle. they also don't need to supply a table and chairs for you to sit at while you drink it.

The list of overheads goes on. I don't know what the profit margin is on wine, but on beer, my local makes about 20p a pint profit on a pint costing £2.50 (which would probably be around the 50p to 60p mark in Tesco, if bought in a 24 pack). So that's a 8% profit, or looking at it another way, it costs the landlord £2.30 to supply a pint of beer.

It does seem strange that we baulk at the idea of paying £15.00 for a bottle of wine in a supermarket, but don’t seem t have a problem with paying that in a restaurant. Can their overheads really be that much?

When I was holidaying in Sydney, Australia a few years back, there were very few eating establishments that DIDN’T advertise “Bring Your Own Bottle”. It seems the ‘norm’ out there.

No sure why we’re so far behind in introducing the same thing here. Ironically, a work colleague told me about a pub in the city (London) that advertises “Bring your own food”.

I agree with Colin. It's all a total rip off, like prices for mineral water. The other evening I was in an Indian restaurant. One cannot eat Indian food without needing water. Was tap water offerred? No it wasn't. Mineral water of dubious quality was offered @ £2.50 a bottle [75 cl]. one would need 2 bottles for the meal.

Wine nowadays is all labels, fancy labels. It's simply not possible to choose and value a good wine. Most wine is rubbish, far too acidy.

Many other countries have a bring your own wine scheme in place - you bring a bottle of something to the resturant and pay a 'corking fee' of a small amount and drink what you like. It has to be sealed/corked to bring it in, but you can take what you don't drink with you. I first heard about it when I visited friends in Canada. Neat idea.

It's not just wine we are being ripped off on, it's everything. Greed and more greed is what's on the menu today and everyday.

I refuse to pay these prices and to be truthful, I feel quite refreshed not having done so more than I would if I had paid for a glass.