Redditors Are Disturbed By Aldi Wine's Sky-High Price At A Restaurant

Most people know that when you are buying a glass or bottle of wine at a restaurant, you are signing up to pay much more than you would if you went to a liquor store or the grocery store. According to Sommelier Business, it is common practice for restaurants to charge double, triple, or even quadruple the wholesale price of a bottle of wine. Similarly, wines by the glass normally cost what the restaurant paid for the entire bottle. So, when you buy the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu for, say, roughly $30, there's a good chance the restaurant paid less than $10 for it. 

All this being said, it's no surprise that alcohol sales are responsible for about 1/3 of the revenue for restaurants (via FSR). Customers go along with these crazy markups because the expectations have been set and we know that it is part of the cost of dining out, or we just don't think too much of it. However, when a restaurant offers a brand from Aldi, which is notoriously cheap and very recognizable, it's hard not to notice and feel even more ripped off than normal (via Reddit).

We are all caught up in the illusion of paying too much for a bottle of wine at a restaurant until a bottle with a familiar label is plopped down in front of us. This is exactly what happened to one Redditor, who was shocked to see Winking Owl Shiraz served at a restaurant. According to Vivino, the average price that customers have reported for Winking Owl Shiraz is $2.99 and the restaurant charged the Redditor $34. Not only was this a ridiculous markup, but it may have been illegal. 

"Depending on the state, It's illegal to just go to a grocery store and buy wine then resell it," commented one Reddit user. "Alcohol served by bars and restaurants must be bought from a licensed distributor." The Winking Owl Wine could not have been purchased from a distributor because it is an Aldi-exclusive brand (via Aldi Things). Whether or not it was illegal, Reddit was outraged by the markup. "CHARGED WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!! girl that's like 8 bottles," said one user. "They served you the wine equivalent of toilet water and they charged you a 1400% markup? I'd have told them to ... off," remarked another Redditor. Nothing about this situation sounds like a hoot.