Shameless self promotion
- Thread starter VLM
- Start date
Jay Miller
Jay Miller
Wow, now that's a wine list.
It's almost worth driving down just to get access to some more 2009 Cot.
It's almost worth driving down just to get access to some more 2009 Cot.
This is just the reserve list, the regular list is here. But is is also VLM approved.
I had to raise prices so mark e wouldn't drink them all...
I priced them by:
Price=Current wholesale*(1 + 10%)^((current vintage + vintage bonus)-vintage)
Price*mark-up
I used standard time value of money to calculate Price.
10% is what you might make in a year at a restaurant if you get lucky.
Vintage bonus is either 0 or 1. It's a way to make starry vintages like 2002 and 2005 a little more expensive, so people will look at others. I may start adding up to 2.
Mark-up is on a decelerating scale with price from 3 for the cheapest to 2.1 for anything over $100. I sort of made this up in increments rather than write a function, but I'm working on a decelerating exponential with just the right shape for this. As of now, it could be a non-monotonic transformation for wines at certain price points.
Yes, some of the same things, but more focused now on Baudry. I was giving away Rougeard, and no one bought any, so fuck 'em. I pulled it. My friend Michael at Vin Rouge is doing a huge Rougeard list (not up on the web yet, but 6-8 vintages of each wine, I helped a bit with that), so we decided to divide the world between us and I took Baudry.
I had seen the reserve list before and was impressed with it, but hadn't noted all the details. I don't go out to dinner often, and a couple of times have tried to steer departmental work dinners for visiting speakers in that direction, but the gravitational pull of closer options is hard to break. Last night we ate easily-accessible and tasty enough but muddled food at Acme. And there were plenty of things to drink but my teetotaling companions wanted water.
Anyway, nice work!
I think that you win the award for the most complex pricing formula in the history of restaurant wine lists. I like how you use a regressive scale for markup, which all too few restaurants employ. A place I dined at in France used a set markup for their wine regardless of price, so your VdT at 5 FF doubles in price with a 5 FF markup, whereas that bottle of '59 Latour also gets a 5 FF markup. It's a good way of encouraging people to try something special and not just limit themselves to the cheapest wines on the list. I also like that you use pricing to encourage people to investigate "off" vintages.
That's a pretty awesome non-reserve list, too.
Mark Lipton
You can't take margin to the bank, or something like that. The restaurant business is a cash flow business, especially since wine is COD in NC. We have to take a bigger mark-up on less expensive wines or it wouldn't be worth having them. We want people to feel like they are getting good value no matter how much they spend.
I think by calculating the cost of holding the wine and factoring it into price is a batter and more justifiable method of pricing. I may even publicly state it because I think transparency would go a long way. People just assume they are getting ripped off at restaurants because they really don't understand how they work.
Thanks, I've got the list right about where I want it, although I wish we sold more Champagne so I could justify expanding that a bit.
Sharon Bowman
Sharon Bowman
I knew there was a reason I liked you.
Good work, btw. Just don't let the twins go biking after they've had their Vatan.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
So, when do you open a NYC branch with that list?
Indeed.
Question, the list would bode well here in NYC, how is it received in the South?
And as stated above, the mark-ups on the wine are something we'd like to see more of here in the inhospitable North. They are reasonable but you are not giving the wines away. And then I go ahead and look at the food menu prices - here you seem to be indeed giving the food away. Can you shed some light on the dining scene in the triangle there? Where do these menu prices fit in with your competition?
All this begs the question in my mind, if the food is so cheap are your diners put off by the wine prices even though they are receiving very good value? There is nothing that disappoints me more than seeing good food go to waste by want of a glass (or another as need be) of wine.
The wine is starting to catch on. The restaurant has been open since 2006, with an all Dressner list until we bought it from my brother last year (took over May 1st as it happens), so people were used to Texier, Pepière, Baudry, and Roillette but never at the higher end. We're starting to see people order more Burgundy and other things.
We're also starting to see more bottles in lieu of glasses, where this has been a very BTG heavy place.
We'd like to push the prix fixe up so we could experiment with different proteins, but we keep the cost low because the portions aren't large (a 3 course is is a good meal, you shouldn't feel stuff, but sated) and labor costs are lower than other places.
The dining scene is pretty good here (we were NY Times darlings for a while). It's obviously not NY, but we culturally punch above our weight if food, wine and the arts. It's probably because we have the highest density of PhDs and a well educated population in general.
Honestly, did none of you see the 36 hours in Durham article? Do it!
John Roberts
John Roberts
The basic wine list is fantastic.
originally posted by VLM:
Does this look fair?
You know your business far better than I do, but I'd think that a Y asymptote of 1.5 would be more attractive than an asymptote of 2. 50% margin for a $100 wine is still pretty good, no? Likewise, how about an X asymptote of -5 to avoid the catastrophe at low price point? Looking at your graph, it would appear that the 2012 Pepiere would sell for about $50 on your list, which looks overly punitive to me.
Mark Lipton
Greg Hirson
Greg Hirson
originally posted by VLM:
Does this look fair?
I know an R plot when I see one.
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by VLM:
Does this look fair?
You know your business far better than I do, but I'd think that a Y asymptote of 1.5 would be more attractive than an asymptote of 2. 50% margin for a $100 wine is still pretty good, no? Likewise, how about an X asymptote of -5 to avoid the catastrophe at low price point? Looking at your graph, it would appear that the 2012 Pepiere would sell for about $50 on your list, which looks overly punitive to me.
Mark Lipton
The lower asymptote is 2.05 because staff (and owners) get a 50% discount and we don't want to lose money. It's also on the very reasonable side for a restaurant. 1.5x is standard retail (and almost everything we have is also available at Cave Taureau). Because it is a COD state, profit starts eroding immediately upon receipt.
The trick is the curvature parameter.
mark up= b0 + b1*e^(-price*b2)
Pepiere wholesale here is, IIRC, $9.33. According to my model with b2=0.05, the mark-up for that would be 4.56 and the price would be $43, which does sound pretty steep.
We don't use this, BTW. But I would like to be able to have something that is transparent and fair.