96 replies to this topic

[Szeven]

It would be interesting to see real stats on bottles ordered at different types of restaurants.

Does Cabin 12 actually have a competitive advantage @ $5 a bottle over XXX pub/restaurant at $10-20?

People obviously are not ordering bottles at Cabin 12 very often, so I dont really understand how that is a competitive advantage. You cant split a bottle of wine and drive these days, as 2 glasses each is probably over .05 BAC. If I'm spending $12/plate on dinner, im probably not drinking an entire bottle, and im sure as hell not adding another $12 + $5 + Bottle for a cab fare. But maybe this is not the norm? Maybe lots of people do spend $12-14/plate, and drink an entire bottle of wine @$30? They would then save the $10 and buy the bottle and pay $5? Is that really plausible?

If im going 'out' and planning to drink a lot, I would feel like a total douche bringing a bottle of wine to drink first and then order off the menu. This cant be common either.

And who is shopping their dinner based on corkage fees? I think Smokin bones food sucks. Im still not going to go there. I think Brasserie is a nice place, but I cant afford to go there every week, so I dont care what their corkage is.

So again, does corkage matter? As long as cheaper restaurants are cheaper and more expensive restaurants are more expensive I dont see this gimmick amounting to much returning business.

[Holden West]

My bottom line opinion on all this is that the government is merely legalizing something that has been going on "under the table" at fine restaurants for years. And government eliminating meddling red tape is good, right? The downside is that it's putting restaurants in the awkward position of creating and publicizing a fee for a service most of them aren't interested in or hadn't even considered before.

Like someone said, the chances of this happening in most places is so remote. It's like having a rule at your roommate's apartment stating that if in the event Scarlett Johannson knocks at your door, who gets the opportunity to ask her out.

[Mike K.]

^ok ok, it's not quite that unlikely of a scenario

BYOW needs time to grow and become a facet of dining out. In nations where this has been the norm for a generation bringing your own wine is popular.

[Baro]

I wish they'd get out of liquor entirely. No need for licensing at all, or very cheap straight forward licensing with no limits in number of licenses in the city or number of tables and so on. It's a cash grab mixed with social conservatism/Puritanism.

[Mike K.]

Consumers are their own worst enemy by tolerating the government's taxes.

If consumers refused to pay $7 for a glass of wine at a restaurant various liquor lobby groups and restaurant/bar lobby groups would come down on the government faster than flies on...

[Bob Fugger]

Consumers are their own worst enemy by tolerating the government's taxes.

If consumers refused to pay $7 for a glass of wine at a restaurant various liquor lobby groups and restaurant/bar lobby groups would come down on the government faster than flies on...

LOL!! Do you think that if the BCRFA had ANY influence, all of the crap that I mentioned in a previous post and corkage would have gone down like this? People would stop buying wine and we would all go out of business and nobody would give a damn.

In re: what Baro said, I totally agree. Let the market figure it out. Tax it if you want, but at the very least, get out of distribution. Imagine, my restaurant buys 10,000x the amount of wine that a regular John Q. Citizen buys, and we get ZERO discount from the distributor based on purchase volume. I tell you, if we got a decent deal on wine, it wouldn't have to be marked the funk up so high.

[G-Man]

^ and ^^^ Couldn't agree more. The fact that this change is seen as progressive is laughable. We are still living with laws that reflect a society just poking out of prohibition.

Of course bulk buyers should get a discount as any normal supplier would provide and I should also be able to pick up a bottle at the grocery store.

[VicHockeyFan]

Of course bulk buyers should get a discount as any normal supplier would provide and I should also be able to pick up a bottle at the grocery store.

Yes, but of course, whenever the government gets involved in regulating something, regular laws of supply and demand go out the window. They usually monopolize it too, make it illegal for others to trade (liquor, lotteries) as if they went head to head with the private sector it'd show even more how laughably inept they are.

Example:

When the Tim Hortons at Newfoundland’s Health Sciences Centre opened in 1995, the hospital’s administrator predicted the shop would turn an annual profit of up to $300,000 and pay for seven nurses — or 11 support staff, or maybe even pay for the increase in chemotherapy drugs for cancer patients.

Instead, the coffee shop at the St. John’s hospital lost about $260,000 last year, offering what critics say is a cautionary tale of what can happen when the public sector gets involved in things better done by private enterprise.

“Let me tell you why [the hospital franchise loses money],” Vickie Kaminski, the authority’s president and CEO, told reporters on Tuesday. “We charge you a buck-ninety-four for that large coffee, but we insist that the staff who are pouring the coffee are Eastern Health staff, and they get paid $28 an hour.

http://news.national...y-tale-critics/

Now, running a hospital sounds very daunting, very tricky, very skilled people would be required. Yet the people running this hospital could not figure out the economics of running a Tim Horton's. That's kind of scary.

[G-Man]

^

[jklymak]

When the Tim Hortons at Newfoundland’s Health Sciences Centre opened in 1995, the hospital’s administrator predicted the shop would turn an annual profit of up to $300,000 and pay for seven nurses — or 11 support staff, or maybe even pay for the increase in chemotherapy drugs for cancer patients.

Wow, they are paying the Tim Hortons employees way more than the nurses and support staff

On topic, I agree with deregulation of the liquor industry. I guess I think a restaurant saving liquor should require some sort of license, but it should be pretty easy to get, and not used municipally to artificially strangle the supply of bars. I find our bars of a pretty shockingly high quality compared to less regulated locales.

Same goes for liquor distribution. I think the political reason it hasn't happened is that the price of alcohol would go through the roof in the remote parts of the province. But otherwise, I can't see why anyone puts up with it.

[Marc]

Good on you for letting people bring in their own wine. I never order alcohol at restaurants due to the markup, maybe some other places will follow the free/cheap corking fee. I know I'd be much more likely to go to those places, but the $30 fee places probably don't want riff-raff like me anyways.

I think there will be other places to follow the low corkage fees set by Cabin 12 or Smoking Bones but I would bet that those places don't really have much of a wine selection in the first place.

I also pretty sure that Brasserie L'ecole is French for riff-raff

Marc

[Candarius]

Coming from Australia, where we would go out for lunch having stopped at the bottle shop to pick up a decent bottle of wine (at a fraction of the cost of similar wine here) and then heading to a restaurant where they would happily bring us glasses to drink our wine (at no charge), I am amused to see how this is playing out :-)

I am honestly not sure I will ever take a bottle of wine to a restaurant when the charge is $20...but then I do not often buy a bottle of wine nowadays!

[VicHockeyFan]

$2 corkage at Wharfside before 6pm.

[Nparker]

$2 corkage at Wharfside before 6pm.

But how much does the restaurant pay you to eat there?

[concorde]

I would just like to know when I can buy wine, beer and booze at Safeway, Costco or Macs for that matter.

[Sparky]

I would just like to know when I can buy wine, beer and booze at Safeway, Costco or Macs for that matter.

Elect a new government.

[VicHockeyFan]

Milestones:

$10 Tuesdays
$19 other days