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Restaurants in London are raising their corkage fees as they try to turn a profit, say industry experts. While the average fee for opening a bottle of still wine on site is around £12 to £15, some restaurants in London are increasing the fee to over £100 per bottle, depending on the market value of the wine. The fees help to recover the costs of serving alcohol, such as uncorking, pouring, washing up, and bringing the wine to the right temperature. They also help to cover revenue lost from in-house alcohol sales, as restaurants generally earn more from wine than from food.
Dorian, a restaurant in Notting Hill, raised its corkage fee to £100 plus the cost of another bottle from its 25-page wine list, where prices range from £50 to £5,895. Another restaurant, Fallow in St James’s, charges £50 for each bottle of still wine and £90 for each bottle of sparkling wine not on its wine list. Other establishments do not charge corkage at all, while some offer a policy where corkage is waived on less popular dining days. The Hawksmoor chain of steakhouses, for instance, offers free corkage on quiet midweek nights.
The increase in corkage charges is partly due to rising costs for restaurants, including wage and energy bills. Whole chains have gone out of business due to an inability to turn a profit across the restaurant sector. Even the wealthy are looking for ways to save money, such as buying wine relatively cheaply and waiting for its value to increase before bringing it to a restaurant. According to Joe Lutrario from Restaurant magazine, the fine dining sector in particular has struggled with these issues
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