Comments on: BYOB: Toronto restaurants drop corkage fees

By: Dick

Dick — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 21:25:04 +0000

and I agree with Michele that marking up %200 is robbery especially if you are not offering something very exclusive…

By: Dick

Dick — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 21:21:34 +0000

I understand it may seem daunting to pay to bring your own product in to a business and have them serve it to you in their stemware and clean up after you. But it costs thousands of dollars to acquire an Ontario liquor licence let alone all the other permits and licences required to operate a legal restaurant in Ontario. Then there are the tens of thousands, or much more, dollars that go into opening a restaurant. Of course I would be remiss not to take into account all of the staff that have been trained and rely on their income to survive as well as job creation, that seems like a positive fact!
Now say were making 1.2 million a year after a 35% food cost, salary budgets of $400,000, rent and opening debt payments and anything else that might and will go wrong and will cost earnings to repair, oh and of course I have to deduct $350,000 from that 1.2 mil cause were not selling any wine or charging a small corkage fee…
I can’t speak as to Montreal’s situation, in Ontario it is expensive to operate a first rate restaurant and it is a business. It may seem like all fun times and late nights but it requires dedication and skill and you are only as good as your last meal and I think anybody who has dedicated their life to creating a quality product or service that is in demand should be at least afforded the opportunity to earn a decent honest living. If you cant afford to eat out in restaurants then cooking at home can be fun! except if it’s done well with quality products it’s expensive and messy and requires experience and special equipment but thats okay because it’s just INSANE to pay for something of value.
I bet you don’t like tipping either.

By: Glenda

Glenda — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 22:33:29 +0000

I agree. As I love to visit wineries, of course there are always a few wines with us on the way home, without corkage fee I see dining out more often in the future.

By: Richard M

Richard M — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:54:26 +0000

“Wakeup” ‘s comment about restaurants not being able to survive with no corkage fee simply does not hold water. There are hundreds of restaurants in Montreal and Quebec City who do VERY WELL with a no-charge corking policy. We have homes in both Quebec City and Toronto where we live roughly half the time each. The Quebec restaurants with no corking fee are always packed and obviously thriving. Some have been in business with this policy for over ten years. It is probably just a matter of time before Toronto restaurant owners wake up to this reality …

By: B. Newman

B. Newman — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:21:23 +0000

East Side Mario’s on Front Street here in Toronto – pleasantly surprised with no corking fee, impressed with the food and loved the service!

By: About Thyme Bistro « wgwines.com

About Thyme Bistro « wgwines.com — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:17:36 +0000

[...] a week in Toronto where corkage fees are up to $50 per bottle, we were pleasantly surprised to be able to enjoy a bottle of Hidden Bench rose (brought from the [...]

By: Porgi

Porgi — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:45:55 +0000

oops sorry about that…
click on my name for link to Globe Bistro!

By: Porgi

Porgi — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:44:27 +0000

Great service+food last night $20 corkage. ordered banquet burger. brought my own pinot noir. heavenly! ask for Alex at upstairs patio bar nice guy.

By: Michele

Michele — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:06:49 +0000

My most fervent wish is for restaurants to simply lower the mark-up on wines to a reasonable level. 150% mark-up? 200% in some cases? That’s nuts. It’s appalling to be charged $46 for a $22 bottle of wine that I can easily buy from the LCBO.

This is a plea to restaurant owners to give us the best of both worlds: The convenience of buying wine from you, at a mark-up we can live with.

By: Krista

Krista — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:21:48 +0000

I was in Philadelphia last summer for the May 24 long weekend and most of the restaurants in Centre City are not licensing and therefore BYOB. They charge no corkage fees and just about every restaurant we looked into was packed all weekend long. I did notice that they do seem to try to pack a lot of tables in though, I guess to recover some costs but it was worth being inches away from the table beside you to enjoy your own bottle of wine for no extra cost. I think it’s ridiculous to charge a $45 corkage fee.

By: peter

peter — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:40:16 +0000

For my 60th, took my mum and the bottle of ’45 Margaux she had given me, to Pegase, noted for its food and stemware. The waiter was hoping the cork would come out OK, but it started to disintegrate, so he produced some contraption that somehow removed the rest of the cork before decanting the wine – still delicious after all those years. And no corkage fees, of course!

By: Tory

Tory — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:13:59 +0000

DIDIER Restaurant & Catering dropped our corkage fee to $20.00 eight months ago.

By: mj

mj — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:37:08 +0000

Just had a great meal at TEN in Port Credit. BYOB on Mondays and no corkage at all. Great food and service. Definitely will return.

By: Fooman

Fooman — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:13:51 +0000

One other main difference is the cost of alcohol in both Quebec and Ontario, and the cost of licensing the resto. In Ontario, you still have to be licensed to be BYOB, but in Quebec you can opt for a cheaper, easier to get, BYOB license. Also, restaurants have figured out how to make money by selling “food”, where Ontario restaurants make money by selling you a bottle of wine at 300% markup – which is why Fuzion is on some menus at $22.00.

By: marco

marco — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:03:55 +0000

i recently visited toronto and being from montreal i can honestly say that if and when toronto decides to have BYOB and not charge corkage fee i personally along with several other thousands of people will be ready to relocate in a heartbeat. toronto is now a beautiful cosmopolitan city with true ethnic diversity and its culinary tastes are delightful. already light years ahead of montreal economically, montreal’s BYOB evolved from a necessary means of survival for restauranteurs than were denied liquor permits because of language issues or zoning permit problems. toronto’s situation is much different, i can only imagine the positive impact if indeed such corkage fees were removed. combined with people having more spendable income a restaurants business would increase tenfold….