BYO Wine Trend Grows in U.S.

GoBYO.com Finds Over 15,000 Restaurants Permit BYO

PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Wine lovers, as well as budget-wise diners, will now find it easier to bring their own wines to restaurants by using www.GoBYO.com, a website launched today by DiningInfo, which has identified dramatic restaurant industry trends in a new survey.

The DiningInfo survey of restaurants in ten major regions (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Southeast Florida and Washington/Baltimore) revealed a significant increase in the number of U.S. restaurants that now permit customers to bring their own wine.

“We surveyed more than 50,000 restaurants and discovered a distinct upward trend in BYO-friendly dining establishments, identifying over 15,000 that now allow diners to bring their own wine,” said Devon Segel, DiningInfo CEO. “A significant finding of our latest survey was that a substantial number of restaurants with liquor licenses are now competing head-on with pure-BYO restaurants. This is good news for both wine lovers who enjoy bringing a favorite bottle of wine, as well as budget-conscious consumers.”

“A growing number of consumers base their discretionary spending upon affordability. The tipping point between deciding whether to eat out, or stay at home, is often based upon whether or not a restaurant will allow them to bring wine, and the corkage fee, if any,” added Segel. DiningInfo surveyed restaurants in and around the 10 major U.S. cities. GoBYO.com makes the wine policy and corkage information for these restaurants available online for free. Additionally, GoBYO.com houses the only online list of State BYO regulations in these markets and will later provide this information for all 50 States.

GoBYO.com also provides extensive, detailed information about each restaurant and multiple search options. Unique to GoBYO.com is a quartet of restaurant ratings – Composite Ratings, Most Popular Ratings, Wine-Friendly Ratings and star ratings from Yelp.com.

Serving as a vast informational source, GoBYO.com provides direct links to restaurant websites, a “Find Reviews” function that automatically customizes a Google Web search for reviews of a particular restaurant, and a “Reserve a Table” function to make reservations through OpenTable.com.