re wines... my friends have a restuarant in Melbourne. Their markup is usually X 3 or X 4. sometimes x 8 if its been stored for a few years. their last restuarant it was only double markup with a $5.00 corkage. they say somehow you must make the customers drink your expensive wine, without scaring them off with excess charges or corkage. But grog is how they make half their profits, and desert is also their other big earner, X 5-8 profit. ie large cheesecake cost say $10. they sell at $8.00 a slice. if you can believe this, and they tell me its true, their smallest margins come from the main course. not much it most dishes at all, except pasta. as so little work, and cheap ingrediants. But running, chef ,kitchen, staff etc make the main low low margin. he said if all customers only ate a main course he would close. they make by far the biggest profit from wine BY THE GLASS ie $6-8 for basic $6.00 a bottle wine. Because the customers always seem to drink lots of glasses, though even though they originally only intended one. he said when businessmen come in friday night, etc, and start getting carried away ordering scotch by the glass etc the money rolls in. they also make lots of men pretending to be very wine savy and ordering top shelf wine, ie young advertising guys. they order $300.00 bottles some times which my friends bought 2 years ago for 50-80 dollars. I always thought restuarants hated rows of executives drinking spirits. NOT SO im told. (exceptions of course) I will give you an idea how good a restuarant can be, they often make a profit per week of $15,000 dollars. Massive hours as a couple etc, but over a year they do very very well. staff and related headaches aside. and ps went to a well known restuarant last night ordered a Cafe Latte i watched and voila a five second extraction. that cost me $4.50 where do you start. cheers
