How much should a restaurant charge for corkage?

Market convention says to survey eight to ten comparable restaurants nearby and set the fee somewhere inside their range. Typical fees land between $10 and $50 per bottle, with $20 to $25 most common, and upscale urban rooms commonly running $50 to $100.

That is an entire industry benchmarking against itself and calling the result a strategy. Every restaurant ecosystem is unique, with its own bottle sale average and its own level of urgency.

A better starting point is profit per transaction. Not what a bottle sells for, but the average margin after cost. If an average bottle sale generates roughly $100 in profit per transaction, pricing decisions can be measured against that number.

A corkage fee set meaningfully below that number keeps the door open and still captures revenue for the service provided. A fee set at or above it is a wall, and guests will read it as one.

Glassware, labor, and cleanup produce a modest number that’s defensible to any guest who asks. A $75 fee is not sized to service. It’s sized to profit the restaurant would have made on a bottle the guest was never going to buy at list price.

The tell is what happens under pressure. When business slows, the fee goes up. Nothing about the labor changed. Only the fear did. Keep the corkage fee low and please your wine drinking guests to get them ordering from the wine list and inviting their friends to your restaurant.