RODION SHINKAREV'S COMMENTARY ON RBC VINO
There is a ritual spread among wine experts of visiting each other with your own bottle, called "Bring Your Own Bottle" (BYOB). This is also the name for the situation when visitors who are not ready to put up with the markups in restaurants come to the establishment with their own bottle.
In some restaurants and wine bars, for the pleasure of their own wine, a corkage fee can be included in the bill, costing from 1 thousand rubles to 30 thousand rubles, depending on the wine and the level of the establishment.
RBC Vino published an article in which Rodion Shinkarev, Counsel at Infralex, commented on the issues of corkage: about the legality, rules for providing and legal refusal to pay in a restaurant.
A corkage fee - the form of a fee charged to a visitor for bringing in alcohol - may be established as one of the additional services of a catering establishment (clause 4, clause 9, clause 19 of the Rules for the Provision of Catering Services, approved by the Government Resolution No. 1515 of 21.09.2020, Article 16 of the Law "On Consumer Rights").
As for additional services, they must be included in the rules, menus, stores and other advertising brochures of the establishments so that the visitor can familiarize themselves with the fact and provision of a corkage fee in advance, and the visitor learned about this only when, for example, they were brought a bill in which the corkage fee was calculated, then the visitor does not pay for such a service.
“If the guest paid such an invoice, then even in this case he/she made a refund for the trial fee, since the additional service provided was not agreed upon with him/her,” Rodion clarified.