Why we must pay through our nose for water in UAE restaurants

Service levels at decent Dubai restaurants are not too bad. As you take your place at a table and before you’ve had a chance to scan at the menu, a waiter is likely to be at your service, filling your glass with the water that you will be drinking that evening, without you needing to ask.

But there’s a catch.

If you’re lucky, the restaurant may have served you locally sourced water. Even in that case, the bottle will cost multiple times more than what it does in a grocery store. Seldom will a 1.5-litre bottle of any kind of water be priced in single digits.

Castello, an Arabic-styled restaurant in Jumeirah serves two brands of water: Hildon and AquaFina, priced Dh18 and Dh12, respectively, for a 1.5-litre bottle. “We mark up the price per bottle,” acknowledges Obai Bouhassoun, General Manager of the restaurant. He admits that the same bottles can be purchased in the grocery store for much less.

A manager of another restaurant in Jumeirah adds: “I pay my bills. I maintain the cooler where the water is stored, pay the repair-man if it does not function, pay the worker who carries the water into the cooler and so on. I need to price my bottles at a higher rate; it is not really a source of profit