Imagine the situation: you come to a trendy restaurant in the city center, order a salad with avocado, shrimp and author’s dressing for 750 rubles, and then you want to drink it, look at the menu and a bottle of water there costs 800 rubles . And it is not necessary to dream in Moscow! The situation looks ridiculous. Why can a meal spent on expensive materials, the labor of a cook who buys beautiful handmade dishes cost less than water, which is still available in unlimited quantities in our country? Is it because it’s in a nice bottle and brought from Italy? And by the way, this is not always reflected in his taste for the better. Why bring water from Europe?
Let’s try to understand why in some places the water is poured for free, while in others only premium bottled water is served for a seemingly unreasonable large sum of money.
The first interesting fact worth knowing is that by European standards, high-end restaurants must have water from at least three different regions on their menu. We’re not sure everyone in Russia is aware of this rule, but many people repeat it, even unconsciously. What’s the purpose?
We think many would agree that water doesn’t taste the same.
It is tastier than drained, free from tap, natural wells, drained. But still, impurities of various minerals and salts can give their own nuances of taste that will please some and not at all suit other guests. For this reason, it is customary to offer options in restaurants. Moreover: in Western countries there is a profession of water waiter. It helps the restaurant choose the types of water on the menu and helps guests choose based on goals: getting drunk, replenishing the buyers, completing the meal.
To some, this approach may seem ridiculous, but let’s face it: not everyone understood the profession of wine sommelier before. Wine and wine, it doesn’t matter what to drink. But time passes and the approach changes.
For example, at the AOC restaurant in Copenhagen, there are four different brands of water from all over Scandinavia on the menu but more than that, they have a tasting kit and six types of water with different flavors. And in a restaurant in London, a restaurant in the Claridge’s hotel, more than 35 different types of mineral water are found on the menu.
Therefore, if you look at water through the prism of his work and knowledge of subtle flavors, paying for water in a restaurant in principle makes a little more sense.
Russia has enough of its own wells, glaciers and mountain rivers through which water flows. So why bring it from abroad? Isn’t that a waste of money?
Here we are talking more about the status and concept of the institution. When people go to an Italian restaurant, they expect to see Italian juice on the menu. This is not important for everyone, but the institution tries to meet the needs of even the most demanding guest.
More on rigor: there’s a sizable group of people who don’t trust filtered water but only drink bottled water. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense for institutions to reject it outright.
And the final argument for paid water in restaurants: it’s simply cost-effective. It does not require any special costs other than transportation, is easy to store and is an added benefit to the business, helping to keep prices lower, for example, for meals. As we wrote at the beginning of the article, its price is not so high everywhere, but 300-500 rubles in a restaurant is now quite standard.
Now consider the arguments against paid water in businesses.
It is a really cheap resource in our country. A good filter in the water supply system can provide drinking water to all guests and is also environmentally friendly because you don’t have to throw away or recycle glass and plastic bottles every time.
And some modern restaurants with a zero-waste approach to production do it themselves by ordering expensive foreign filtration systems and completely rejecting bottled water.
It is clear that tap water also costs money for a restaurant, but these are expenses that can already be included in the cost of meals, which increases loyalty to the business with free water, obviously belonging and must be available to a person’s basic needs. And yes, that’s easy to say when you’re not a restaurateur, but if that wasn’t possible then there wouldn’t be businesses with such a practice. Yes, even if prosecco can be poured for free at breakfast, what can we say about a few glasses of tap water?
The ideal solution here would probably be to choose between free filtered water and paid bottled water. And everyone decides for himself. In principle, only those who drink “Baikal Legends” and Evian will not refuse them anyway. As an intermediate option, you can introduce the application “water additive”, that is, the guest pays a conditionally fixed 100 rubles to receive unlimited water. You can’t drink forever anyway.
Benefit is utility though, and water and toilet should be available to people and not deprive guests of the simple benefits of civilization.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.