Seltzer for all | Lille Allen
Why more restaurants are making sparkling water free
At a recent celebratory meal, when presented with the essential opening question of any meal — “Still or sparkling?” — I chose sparkling, and was somehow surprised to find a bottle of Pellegrino plopped on my table a minute later, and a charge for $9 on the check at the end of the night. I shouldn’t have been surprised. This is how this interaction has gone since the dawn of restaurants realizing they can charge for the two most necessary components to sustain all life on earth: water and air.
But I was surprised, because more often over the past year or so, restaurants have been giving away sparkling water for free. In both fine dining establishments and cafes, filtered, sparkling water is increasingly part of the included hospitality experience, not an upsell. And that’s how it should be. As writer and cookbook author Joshua David Stein argued in Esquire a few years ago, “Still or sparkling’ is a clever rhetorical sleight of hand meant to befuddle, goad and mislead the diner into paying for what should naturally be free.”
Complimentary sparkling water is offered at fine dining destinations like San Francisco’s Osito and Brooklyn’s Ilis, neighborhood spots like Rosemary’s and Gem Wine, and cafes like Seattle’s Macrina and Pine & Crane in LA. And for the restaurants, it comes at a cost. According to Chase Sinzer, owner of Claud and Penny in Manhattan, offering filtered, carbonated water for free “costs us $300 a month for each restaurant. We could probably stand to make 4-5 times that in profit per month by selling sparkling.” But while charging $9 for a bottle of Perrier is a value add for the restaurant, more chefs are willing to eat the costs of free sparkling water if it makes diners feel like they’re getting a deal — which might just make them return.
For many chefs, it’s about conveying value. “It felt like nickel and diming people to also charge them a few bucks for sparkling water,” says David Barzelay of San Francisco’s Lazy Bear, where dinner is $295 a person for a set tasting menu. In an already pricey dining setting, the chef didn’t want to create an atmosphere of exclusion. Just as there are no extra courses or wine pairings for those who feel like paying more, there’s no option for a bottle of water for those who’d rather pay for an alternative to tap seltzer. “If somebody’s made the decision to come here, saved up for it, I don’t want them to come here and feel like they’re not getting the full experience unless they add on something else,” he says.
Sinzer also considers what ensures diners feel like the price tag equates to a full experience. “We always thought if you’re going to spend that much money on dinner, you should be getting your water for free, whether it’s bubbly or not,” says Sinzer. A $98 raw bar may not seem like a bargain, but the treat of getting something for free that usually comes at a cost softens the blow. And, Sinzer hopes, imbues diners with fuzzy feelings. “If we can imprint something, and that imprint is something that showcases the value we’re trying to give you, it’s a good thing, hypothetically, for us as a business to keep you coming back to the restaurant.”
Most restaurants that offer free sparkling water aren’t giving away bottles of Italian mineral water like San Pellegrino, but have installed water filtration systems that produce clean tap water, still and sparkling. If you’re giving away bubbles for free, this is the most economical — and waste-free — way to do it. “There is a lot of waste in restaurants in general, even though we recycle and compost,” says Gregory Gourdet of Kann in Portland, Oregon. This way, restaurants “don’t have a million glass bottles at the end of the evening, adding to already a large pile of wine.”
It’s often also a matter of taste when it comes to a restaurant’s sparkling water offerings. Seth Stowaway of Osito in San Francisco said that after Topo Chico was sold to Coca-Cola, he didn’t want to have it on the menu, and couldn’t find any other sparkling water he liked enough to include. “I don’t want to give people something that I think is not as good, just so that I can sell it to them,” he said. San Francisco’s tap water, filtered and carbonated through Osito’s Chrysalli system, is something he’s proud to serve.
Sometimes, restaurants have had to adjust how they convey this to customers, who are so busy frantically insisting, “Tap is fine!!” that they don’t understand they’re being offered something for free. At Claud, servers approach the tables with two carafes, showing the table the sparkling option isn’t something that will cost them. At Kann, servers say, “House-filtered sparkling water.” “There are some people who, before we can even ask them, just say Pellegrino,” says Barzelay. “Then we have to say, we actually have complimentary sparkling water on tap.”
Both customers who were already planning on ordering Pellegrino, and those who were ready to hold firm to tap in the face of any threatened upsell, wind up pleasantly surprised. It’s not the kind of offer that makes or breaks a meal, a singular thing that makes a customer die to return even if the rest of the experience was sub-par. But it’s one little detail that, ideally, adds up with a bunch of other hospitality gestures to leave diners with the impression that you’re being taken care of.
Personally, I think it works. The times sparkling water has been free have set the tone for my meals to come, telling me that this is a place that knows how to create a good time. The calculation in any restaurant is always whether the overall experience is worth the dollar amount on the bill. A detail like free seltzer makes you feel like you’re worth more than just a check.
