The Rise of BYOB

For this, we can thank a long tradition of Quaker teetotalism and its post-Prohibition institutionalization in the form of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. More specifically, there's Philadelphia's cap on liquor licenses and their high cost: $60,000. (Liquor licenses cost $4,500 in New York.) For serious BYOBers, the only problem with this arrangement is that they're better off purchasing their wine in another state. The PLCB maintains a monopoly on wine and liquor distribution, and the state-operated stores offer the diversity and inspired choices you'd expect of a Harrisburg-based bureaucracy.

Is there hope for BYOB's rise outside Pennsylvania? Perhaps.

Eight years after Thierry Rochard launched Tartine, he opened a bigger, more ambitious restaurant down the block. Titou had a liquor license and sold its own wine. Both restaurants were doing well, but then came 9/11, which pummeled the city's restaurant and hotel industries. Titou limped along for a few more years before shuttering in 2004. Meanwhile, Tartine continued to thrive.

Tartine had been around longer and had a more loyal following, Rochard told me not long after Titou closed. He also acknowledged that Tartine's BYOB policy, which appeals to cost-conscious diners, might have had something to do with it. I'd go further and say it had everything to do with it.

But it's not only in recessionary times like these that BYOBs can thrive. On a recent Friday afternoon, I dropped by the BYOB restaurant closest to my Upper East Side apartment. I spoke with Izmir Rouzyi, who along with his older brother, Mohammad, owns four Afghan restaurants in New York. The one nearest me has been open for more than 20 years and had never sold alcohol. "At this restaurant everyone brings wine with them, but the one [in the Theater District] gets more of an Indian and Pakistani clientele and they don't bring alcohol," he said. "We just concentrate on the food."

I found myself smiling; this was music to my ears. More than 20 years, in good times and bad, I nodded to myself. Here was the proof I needed.

Still, it was my journalistic duty to press my BYOB ally, so I did.

"But wouldn't you like to have a liquor license here, to make money on the wine?" I asked.

"We have a liquor license," he said.

What?! I was floored.

"We inherited it from the restaurant we took over, and I've renewed it every year," Rouzyi said. "It only costs $500."

It turns out he'd very much like to sell booze at the restaurant. But his older brother, a more conservative Muslim, forbids it.

I retreated to my apartment, wondering if I should re-examine my BYOB advocacy, which places me on the side of draconian government agencies and religious conservatives. Then I poured myself a glass of wine and took solace in the fact that great efforts often require unexpected alliances.

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