Margin Call

Given the number and range of topics about which people argue, it’s always good to find one on which almost everybody will happily agree. Just say the words ‘restaurant wine mark-ups are outrageous’ and I can pretty well guarantee that you’ll find no dissent.

I have to confess to being fascinated by profit margins of every kind – from the ones applied to skimpy underwear, Evian water and Gillette razorblades, to the razor-thin or frankly non-existent examples applied by retailers when trying to attract customers into their stores.

And I’m just as fascinated by the varying responses we all have to those margins. How often do the people who chorus their annoyance at restaurants multiplying the price of a bottle of wine by three or four times, pause to consider the multiple that’s applied to the salad or omelette they eat without complaint? Or the gap between the 31 cents worth of coffee in a Starbucks cappuccino and the $3.65 you pay for it.

How many who criticise the best-selling ghosted celebrity biographies and trash novels in a bookshop window consider the role those profitable items have in subsidising all the loss-making, beautifully written books you and I might prefer to read? More