LTH,

Chicago Mike is correct, BYO is an exceptional policy more akin to a special, you should call the restaurant to verify and get the name of the person you called. That piece of advice, combined with never rely on what you read in print, are two great pieces of advice to take from this thread.*

From what little I know about restaurants, the typical markup on liquor is 200-300%. You can get a guestimate by checking a dozen or so bottles of wine at Sam’s and comparing it to the wine list. Hard liquor, particularly fruity fru-fru drinks, provide all sorts of opportunities for additional markup. If you think there is no room to play in beverage markup without selling alcohol, consider our good friends in the fast food industry who for years have been selling us a $.08 worth of corn syrup and caramel coloring per $1.69 ginormous gulp.* *

Righteous indignation…hmmm, I will infer that you believe there to be no wrong (or that I am not right) and, therefore, it is not necessary to be seeking to stamp out injustice with fervor. I’ll come back to that.

Why on earth would a restaurant without a liquor license have a BYO policy? Why would they take the risk of an accident without dram shop insurance, which you cannot obtain without a license? Why would they risk letting customers bump though other customers with heavy glass bottles leading to spills, accidents and perhaps underage or over-serving issues? Why would a restaurant forego the profits it will make on non-alcoholic beverages it could sell during this period (see above). Oh, yeah, because in the end it leads to profits. Whether opening early helps cover startup costs or whether the buzz created by the BYO crowd is worth its weight in adverting dollars, I don’t know.

What I believe is that a BYO restaurant has figured there is a benefit to offering BYO. They have managed to turn a lemon into lemonade. “Come on in to our new restaurant where word of mouth has not confirmed any of the opening hype and we will reward you by allowing you to bring in your own alcoholic beverages.”

My goal here is not to be indignant about Agami. As I said in my original post, IMO they will fall by the wayside for other reasons. My goal is to help foster a better policy for phasing out BYO offerings, perhaps leading to a win-win as opposed to a loss-loss. Although, I am sure a few Sheeple gave the restaurant a win.

IMO, far too many expense account-ladened diners have allowed far too many abuses to continue, if not be rewarded by the hospitality industry. BTW, I do think the OP incurred a “loss” by having to find a new destination.

Let’s face it. The $15 corkage fee basically said no longer is BYO allowed. It is comparable to a “collector’s corkage” where a licensed, high-end restaurant will allow you to bring in a wine not available in their cellar or which you have been saving for a special occasion.

Keeping in mind the ol’ man’s words, “Life ain’t fair, fare is what you pay the bus driver,” let me state what I think would have been the best practice for both the restaurant and the customer.

1. A sign visible from the street announcing they now have a liquor license (good also for those who are not BYO), should be a good clue;

2. Send out a release announcing the new liquor license; and

3. A card or note passed out to BYO’ers discreetly with the menu, which says “We now have our liquor license, as a courtesy to our customer who have brought their own beverages, we are offering a $3 corkage fee through the end of the month. Please keep in mind that as of the first of next month our corkage fee will be $15. We appreciate your business and look forward to your return”

Do I think Agami’s policy was wrong and created avoidable wrongs? Yes.

Am I indignant about this wrong? When I think of righteous indignation, I think of Jack Nicholson’s dramatization in A Few Good Men…“You wanna know if I ordered the Code Red? You’re Goddammed right I ordered the Code Red and I’d do it again.”

This is as close as I’ll ever get to ordering a Code Red. I know this is a tough business. I want more restaurants to succeed. In particular, I want more cutting-edge places in marginal neighborhoods to succeed. But I do not think it is a good long-term policy to allow customers to walk out the door feeling that they have been scammed, nor do I think it is fair to continue to trade on an offering which people may have gone out of their way to hold up their side of the bargain and not hold up your side.

pd***


* We have all assumed that whoever took the reservation was aware of the change in policy.

** Drink water. Water is good for you. You should drink more of it. Good nutrition practice suggests cutting additional calories by never drinking them (cut out soft drinks, eat an orange rather than drink orange juice). If you pay taxes, you help pay for the infrastructure that brings water to a restaurant, you deserve a glass of water today. When a restaurant has trained its employees to bring a glass of water with the menu I’m loving it, because only then do I have it my way.

*** It should be noted that the author spent his formative years working in the family-owned retail store in a small Wisconsin Town. Often his sense of fairness is considered "out of whack" with Chicago dining customs. However, since he had to know every inch of the hardware store, he thinks it is fair to expect the counter person at Mikey D's to know the 32 items on their menu. Showing his age, he still believes that the customer should be right once in a while.

pdaane wrote:Why on earth would a restaurant without a liquor license have a BYO policy? Why would they take the risk of an accident without dram shop insurance, which you cannot obtain without a license? Why would they risk letting customers bump though other customers with heavy glass bottles leading to spills, accidents and perhaps underage or over-serving issues? Why would a restaurant forego the profits it will make on non-alcoholic beverages it could sell during this period (see above).

Cluelessness and desperation, IMO.

Would a BYO restaurant without a liquor license -- and which does not dispense liquor -- even need or want dram shop insurance? That kind of insurance is to cover the restaurant's liability in the event it is sued by a person who is injured by an intoxicated restaurant patron (could even be the drunk diner himself, who could claim he was overserved before he hurt himself), isn't it? I doubt that a BYO restaurant would be found to have a legal duty to diners who bring their own alcohol and who drink too much of it. A licensed bar can refuse to keep serving, but a BYO restaurant can't just take away a customer's wine. Not so sure about when minors come in with their alcohol. The restaurant didn't sell it to them, but if I were a restauranteur and a bunch of young people came in with alcohol, to stay on the safe side I'd probably check their ID or tell them to go elsewhere.

Chicago Mike wrote:Theres a clear moral to this story:

1) no matter what you think the BYOB policy is, or what you've experienced in the past, when making a reservation ALWAYS confirm the current policy and price and GET THE NAME OF THE PERSON.

It's not up to them to remind everyone who makes a reservation that the BYOB policy has changed. BYOB is an "exceptional" policy and the diner really should confirm it whenever they make a reservation.

Absolutely. But we have agreed on this in the past, haven't we? There actually has been other good consumer advice in this thread, such as LAZ's comment that one cannot completely rely on online or printed information. And, to combine that with the other comments - it really is not the restaurant's fault if a third party's listing is not correct. Of course, that never could happen here with our extensive team of fact-checkers, you can count of LTHForum (not ).

So far, I am in complete agreement with riddlemay, but we do rather part ways at the idea that there is no reason to be angry. If I planned on dining at a place, planned it based on research I had done, information I had gathered, and found some key fact I counted on to be wrong, I would be quite annoyed. Then if I explained this to the restaurant and they made no effort to accommadate me, dull the blow, I would be angry.

The fact that it pretty much is the diner's fault does not make it less aggravating. But one hopes something was learned from it.

BTW, I have always been told that most of a restaurant's profits come from liquor sales. Not necessarily so much because of cost versus price, I think, but because of how much it increases the average tab. Think about it - most of the costs in a given night are fixed (except the direct cost of non-perishables), food, labor, rent, other overhead. So profit comes from maximizing the revenue in any given night. Beverages are a big part of that revenue. Ask any business person, add or reduce revenue by 15 or 20%, and that usually is the difference between surviving and not.

dicksond wrote:So far, I am in complete agreement with riddlemay, but we do rather part ways at the idea that there is no reason to be angry. If I planned on dining at a place, planned it based on research I had done, information I had gathered, and found some key fact I counted on to be wrong, I would be quite annoyed. Then if I explained this to the restaurant and they made no effort to accommadate me, dull the blow, I would be angry.

We're actually not far apart on that, either. I agree that it if happened to me, I would be miffed.

What I take exception to is the idea that we ought to be mad at Agami vicariously, as if Agami committed a grievous offense symbolically against all of us that it needs to be punished for. That Agami deserves some kind of revenge perpetrated upon it (in the form of bad PR, boycotting, etc.) for a sin it committed--when I don't think it's guilty of having committed a sin. Let's not forget: Agami didn't tell the party of 7 to leave, it didn't ask the party of 7 to leave, and it didn't want the party of 7 to leave. It wanted the party of 7 to stay and enjoy the restaurant's food and wine. Could they have waived the corkage fee (a fee which, despite the title of this thread, I think we've agreed is not actually "ridiculous" or out of line) under the circumstances? Sure. But not doing so wasn't a crime.

riddlemay wrote:

dicksond wrote:So far, I am in complete agreement with riddlemay, but we do rather part ways at the idea that there is no reason to be angry. If I planned on dining at a place, planned it based on research I had done, information I had gathered, and found some key fact I counted on to be wrong, I would be quite annoyed. Then if I explained this to the restaurant and they made no effort to accommadate me, dull the blow, I would be angry.

We're actually not far apart on that, either. I agree that it if happened to me, I would be miffed.

What I take exception to is the idea that we ought to be mad at Agami vicariously, as if Agami committed a grievous offense symbolically against all of us that it needs to be punished for. That Agami deserves some kind of revenge perpetrated upon it (in the form of bad PR, boycotting, etc.) for a sin it committed--when I don't think it's guilty of having committed a sin. Let's not forget: Agami didn't tell the party of 7 to leave, it didn't ask the party of 7 to leave, and it didn't want the party of 7 to leave. It wanted the party of 7 to stay and enjoy the restaurant's food and wine. Could they have waived the corkage fee (a fee which, despite the title of this thread, I think we've agreed is not actually "ridiculous" or out of line) under the circumstances? Sure. But not doing so wasn't a crime.

Quite right. And let us not forget that the original poster said that they never actually spoke to a manager about the problem.