Why Pricing Dom Pérignon at $375 Makes More Money Than $600

Most restaurants price Dom Pérignon at three times cost. If you want to know how to price Dom Pérignon at your restaurant beyond that reflex, you need to understand what the bottle is actually doing on your list.

That $600 price tag communicates one thing to your guest: go find value somewhere else.

Dom Pérignon is one of the most universally recognized bottles on the planet. Your guests know what it costs. They've seen it at the hotel bar, the steakhouse across town, the duty-free shop at the airport. When they see $600 on your list, they don't think great program. They think standard markup. And they order something else — or nothing at all.

Now price it at $375.

Something different happens. The guest who knows Dom — and plenty of them do — leans in. They've just found something unexpected: a restaurant that isn't extracting maximum dollars from a name everyone recognizes. That's a trust signal. And trust converts.

This is the Dom Pérignon Effect. A widely known, notoriously overpriced bottle has a unique ability to build credibility precisely because it's so well-known. The margin hit on a single bottle is real. The relationship you build with the guest who noticed? That's worth more than the difference.

The industry backs this up. Roland Micu, MS, beverage director at the World Equestrian Center, told SevenFifty Daily that a premium bottle "must be priced at a lower markup to ensure the guests understand the opportunity before them." SevenFifty Daily That's not a concession. That's architecture.

Amy Racine, beverage director for JF Restaurants in New York, puts it plainly: "It helps build trust, too, and typically that leads to increased future spends." SevenFifty Daily

That's the actual math. Not the COGS calculation. The return on trust.

Here's the principle underneath it: COGS is a proxy metric, not a strategy. A blanket 3x markup protects margin on paper. It doesn't create moments. It doesn't give guests a reason to trust your list, lean into your program, or come back. Dom Pérignon is too recognizable a bottle to treat like a line item. Its brand recognition is working against you at $600. Price it fairly and that same recognition becomes a loyalty engine.

The goal of your wine list isn't to extract the most margin from every bottle. It's to build momentum — across the table, across the check, across the year.

Price Dom like you understand your ecosystem. Your guests will notice. Your revenue will follow.