It is not always easy to choose the right wine when you go to a restaurant. If the letter is full of unknown names and wineries, what tools do you have at your disposal to inform your decision? The price, naturally. But there is a widespread taboo among all diners outside the wine universe. Nobody wants to choose the cheapest bottle, from what that can say about us. So faced with the dilemma of spending a fortune on a bottle that you know nothing about or appearing stingy, we decide to order the second cheapest bottle.
It’s real. The previous story has a lot of legend but also reality. a survey informal prepared by Atlas Obscura discovered a few years ago that the second-cheapest bottle was a recurring choice among its readers. At least 50% of those surveyed admitted having used it on some occasion; and 21% recognized choose it regularly, well above the 13% who tended to settle for the cheapest one. The remaining 25% opted for, perhaps, the most reasonable strategy: asking the waiter. That is to say, the myth has something real.
And it is logical. So much so that in recent years it has emerged another legend: restaurants, aware of this decision-making mechanism, they shoot up the price of the second-cheapest bottle. As everyone knows, the price of any product in a restaurant, especially wine, has nothing to do with its price in a supermarket (not to mention when you go to the wholesaler). The idea behind this other myth, very amplified in the mediais that restaurants multiply the premium on the second cheapest bottle. Because they know what their client will ask for.
Ordering it for a dinner would be an economically irrational decision.
It is? It turns out that a couple of researchers have decided to study the issue and shed data where before there was only a nebula of oral legends. Your response, summarized in this job which analyzes the menu of more than 235 London restaurants, contradicts the myth: the second-cheapest bottle has a lower premium than the later ones, the middle class of the menu. Also the cheapest. And also the most expensive, the top of the table. Your bar on duty is not scamming you when you order the second cheapest. On the contrary, it is a profitable option.
The explanation. Quite succinct and very intuitive. When designing their pricing strategy, restaurants have few incentives to make their cheaper wines more expensive. They function as access to the range for less enthusiastic diners. If they were offered very expensive, many of them would opt for another drink. By maintaining the most modest percentage of profitability, they manage to give them an outlet. A similar logic operates for the most expensive wines: only the most profound connoisseurs choose them, so an honest price, perceived as bargainwill encourage your purchase.
Who loses in this process? Easy: the middle class. It is in the intermediate wines where the quality-price, in relation to the price that we could find in a supermarket, stops paying off. There restaurants skyrocket their % profitability. A necessary sacrifice to prioritize the consumption of cheap wines (for occasional diners) or very exclusive wines (for finer palates).
In figures. On average, intermediate bottles carry a 50% higher price premium than bottles with the highest price. fair. The cheapest ones are around 25%, while the extraordinarily expensive ones, with an almost non-existent surcharge, are very worth it (if you are willing to pay them). In London (and from here you should hold your breath) the average price for a bottle of red is around €48, although a majority (46%) are below €34, and an overwhelming majority (79%) are below €57. We will always have the house wine.
Image | Unsplash
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