Can you bring your own drinks, and what is corkage?
1 September 2026 · 5 min
The question almost always arrives at the end of a viewing, once the seating has been settled and the host is halfway to the door. Can we bring the drinks ourselves? It is asked slightly apologetically, as though it were cheeky, and it is not. It is one of the most sensible questions anyone asks us, because drinks are the part of a party budget that moves most.
The answer is yes at Højdevej 59, on terms worth understanding before you compare us with anyone else. The word to understand first is corkage.
What corkage is, and why Danish venues call it proppenge
Corkage is what a venue charges to serve drinks it did not sell you. In Danish you will see it written as proppenge, sometimes korkage, and both mean the same thing.
It sounds like a penalty and it is not one. Somebody still has to put the bottles cold, carry them to the tables, open them, pour them, collect the empties, wash a few hundred glasses and take the bottles away afterwards. That work is identical whether the drinks came from the venue's storeroom or from the boot of your car. Buy the drinks from the venue and the service is quietly folded into the price. Bring your own and it has to be priced on its own. Corkage is the name for that line.
Whether a venue allows it at all is its own decision rather than your right, so get it into the booking confirmation rather than leaving it in a conversation at the door.
The shapes corkage comes in, and what each one does to your bill
Venues price this in three broadly different ways, and the difference between them is not small.
- Per bottle. The most common model, and the one that punishes variety. Every bottle of wine, every bottle of soft drink and often every crate of beer carries its own charge, so a party that wants a choice of three things pays for that choice three times. It also means you cannot know the figure in advance, because you do not know yet what your guests will open.
- Per guest. Predictable, but blunt. Everyone is counted the same: the children, the guest who is driving, the grandmother who wants tea, and the friend who will happily see the evening through. At a confirmation, where a third of the room is often under fifteen, that is a lot of paying heads who will drink squash.
- A flat fee for the party. One figure, agreed before the day, usually scaled to the size of the group. It is the only model of the three you can actually budget against, and the only one where buying an extra crate on the way does not change the arithmetic.
There is a fourth answer, which is no. Plenty of venues sell only their own drinks, a perfectly honest way to run a room. Just find out which kind of venue you are standing in before you fall in love with it.
How it works here
We keep drinks to three choices, and they sit alongside the menu rather than inside it.
You can take the unlimited soft drinks package, priced per guest, and stop thinking about it. You can take tap water only, which more parties choose than you would expect, particularly for a daytime christening or a lunch. Or you can bring the drinks yourselves, for one flat fee set by how large the party is. Not per bottle, and not per head.
That last distinction is the one that matters. It means a party of sixty pays the same for bringing its own whether it arrives with beer and wine or with three crates of soft drinks and a bottle of something for the toast. It means the children in the room are not charged for the privilege of drinking apple juice. And it means you can decide what to buy on the Saturday morning without recalculating anything. The full picture of what a party here costs sets the drinks choice next to the hall fee and the menu, and the prices page has the current figures, which live in our own system rather than in a blog post that would go stale the day they changed.
One thing that catches people out: plates and cutlery are not a drinks question. If you book the hall without a menu and bring food as well, using our plates, cutlery and washing up is charged separately, per guest. Two different decisions, two different lines.
What bringing your own actually involves on the day
Say yes to this and you have taken on a small logistics job. It is manageable, but it is real.
Somebody has to buy it and guess the quantity. Somebody has to get it here and get it cold, and chilling several crates is not instant. Somebody has to mind the crates during the hour when you would much rather be greeting your guests, so give that job to a named person who is neither the host nor the guest of honour.
Transport is where this room helps. Parking is free and on site, so you pull up, unload at the door and carry crates a few metres rather than circling with a full boot looking for a space. Then ask us about cold storage when you book, because fridge space is finite and the answer depends on what else is happening that day.
The questions to ask before you commit
Whichever venue you end up choosing, these five are worth asking in writing:
- Is corkage charged per bottle, per guest, or as one fee for the party?
- Does it change if we bring only soft drinks?
- Are glasses, ice, opening, pouring and washing up included in it?
- How much can you chill for us, and when should the drinks arrive?
- What happens to what we do not open?
If the answers come back clearly, you are dealing with somebody who has done this before. Our frequently asked questions covers the ones we hear most, and anything not on it we will answer directly. Come and book a visit to the hall at Højdevej 59 in 2300 København S, tell us what kind of evening you are planning, and we will tell you honestly which of the three drinks options will suit it best.