Bar costing for every cocktail, to the milliliter

Both your menu price and your pour costThe cost of a drink's ingredients divided by its menu price, as a percentage. depend on one number: what the drink costs to make. Spirits are easy to cost because their prices are on the invoice. House syrups and freshly pressed juice take a little more work, and small items like mint, eggs and garnish are easy to overlook. The time spent preparing them matters too. This guide shows you how to cost every part of a drink: each bottle in the specA drink's exact recipe: each ingredient and how much of it., the house syrups and juices, the garnish and the prep time. Then you turn that cost into a menu price.

How to work out liquor cost per ounce

Start with one bottle. Say you buy an aged rum at $30 for a 750 ml bottle. Divide the price by the ml in the bottle: $30 ÷ 750 = $0.04 a ml.

cost per ml = price paid ÷ ml in the bottle

If your specs are written in ounces, you also need the cost per oz. One US fluid ounce is 29.57 ml, so a 750 ml bottle holds 750 ÷ 29.57 = 25.36 oz. The rum costs $30 ÷ 25.36 = $1.18 an oz.

cost per oz = price paid ÷ (ml in the bottle ÷ 29.57)

The ml is the simpler unit, because bottles are sold in ml. Many bars also use a jiggerA small measuring cup for pouring exact amounts of spirits and other ingredients. that pours 30 ml as its ounce. In that bar, 1 oz of the rum costs 30 × $0.04 = $1.20, not $1.18.

Use the price on your last invoice, after any discount on that invoice. If the discount was a one-time offer, use the price of your next order.

Cost the spec line by line

A line is one ingredient of the spec with its cost. Take a Mai Tai that sells for $15 before tax. It has two rums, dry curaçao (an orange liqueur), lime juice and orgeat, shaken and served over crushed ice with a mint sprig. Each ounce is poured as 30 ml.

Each line uses the same calculation as the rum. Add the lines to get the cost of the drink.

line cost = price paid ÷ ml in the bottle × ml in the spec
drink cost = all the line costs added together

The two rums cost $1.95, which is 64% of the drink. Every line has an invoice price except the lime juice and the orgeat. You get their cost per liter by costing them as sub-recipes, in the next section.

Keep fractions of a cent on the small lines, and round only once, at the end. The pour cost calculator keeps the fractions, with one line per ingredient.

Sub-recipes: house syrups and juice

A sub-recipe is something you make in house and pour into drinks, such as a syrup, a juice or an infusion. You cost it as a recipe of its own.

Here is the orgeat in the Mai Tai.

cost per liter = cost of everything in the batch ÷ liters bottled

Then you use the cost per liter in drinks exactly like a bottle price.

The liters you bottle are the yield. About 1 kg of ingredients goes into this orgeat. Only 750 ml comes out, because you strain off the almond pulp. So measure each batch in a jug as you bottle it. When the yield changes, change it on the recipe.

Fresh juice works the same way. The fruit is the only ingredient, and the juice you press is the yield. A case of limes at $60 presses 6 liters of juice, which is $10 a liter. So the Mai Tai's ¾ oz (22.5 ml) of lime juice costs $0.225. Lime size, season and your press all change the yield, so measure your own yield.

Sub-recipes can also sit inside each other, like a falernum (a spiced syrup) made with simple syrup. When the price of sugar changes, so does the cost of the syrup, the falernum and every drink that pours either one.

Garnish, eggs and the other small lines

Mint costs $3 for a bunch of 20 sprigs, so one sprig costs $0.15, but only if all 20 are good enough to serve. If 5 are not, each of the 15 usable sprigs costs $3 ÷ 15 = $0.20.

cost per usable piece = price paid ÷ pieces that reach a glass

If you separate an egg for its white, count the cost of the whole egg unless the kitchen uses the yolk. At $9 for a tray of 30 eggs, that is $0.30 a drink. If you buy liquid egg whites, cost the amount you pour from the pack instead.

For bitters, measure 20 dashes from your own bottle into a jigger once. Divide the ml by 20 and cost one dash from that.

Cost a large clear ice cube as a line too. Divide what you pay by the number of cubes you can actually serve, whether you buy the cubes or cut them in house.

Prep labor: should you count it?

Someone has to make the orgeat and press the limes. Add this prep labor to your sub-recipes to see what a drink really costs. It helps when you set a price and when you decide whether to make a syrup or buy it. But keep the ingredients-only cost next to it. Do not use the cost with labor to work out your pour cost or your gross profitThe menu price of a drink minus what its ingredients cost..

Both pour cost and your P&L use the ingredients-only cost. Against a pour cost target, a cost with labor makes the drink look worse than it is. And the P&L already counts the barback's hours in payroll, so labor in the drink costs would count the same hours twice.

Here is what labor adds to the Mai Tai. Assume a batch of orgeat takes 45 minutes to make, and a case of limes takes 1 hour to cut and press. Assume the barback costs the bar $20 an hour. That is the wage plus payroll tax, insurance and any benefits.

labor per liter = prep minutes ÷ 60 × hourly cost of the person ÷ liters bottled

So the 45 minutes add $15 of labor to a batch whose ingredients cost $6. With labor, a liter of orgeat costs $28 instead of $8. The lime juice goes up by a third, from $10 to about $13.33 a liter.

In the Mai Tai, prep labor adds 37.5 cents, so the drink costs $3.42 instead of $3.05. If you sell 100 Mai Tais a week, they carry $37.50 of prep time that the ingredients-only cost does not show.

Labor does not grow with the batch the way ingredients do. A single batch of orgeat carries $15 of labor for 0.75 liters, so its labor is $15 ÷ 0.75 = $20 a liter. Say a double batch (1.5 liters) takes 1 hour. One hour of the barback's time costs $20, so the labor is $20 ÷ 1.5 = about $13 a liter. So make each syrup in the largest batch you will use before its shelf life runs out.

The same numbers help you decide whether to make or buy, as long as the bottled orgeat tastes good enough. If buying it saves the barback's paid time, compare its price with $28 a liter, the house orgeat with labor. If the barback is already being paid and making the orgeat doesn't take time away from other work, buying it may not save any wages. In that case, the immediate cash-cost comparison is closer to $8 a liter, the cost of the ingredients alone. But if buying the orgeat frees up time for other prep, training or service, that time still has value.

How to cost a pre-batch

Cost a pre-batchA cocktail or mix made in a large amount before service, so each drink is faster to serve. the same way as a syrup. Add up everything in the batch, with the water for dilution at zero, and divide by the liters it makes.

Take a freezer Martini with a spec of 2 oz (60 ml) gin and ½ oz (15 ml) dry vermouth. The batch uses 2 liters of gin at $30 a liter, which is $60.00. It also uses 500 ml of dry vermouth from a 750 ml bottle at $20, which is $13.33. The 500 ml of water costs nothing. So the 3 liters cost $73.33, or $24.44 a liter.

cost per serve = batch cost ÷ ml in the batch × ml poured per serve

One serve is 60 ml gin + 15 ml vermouth + 15 ml water = 90 ml (3 oz), and it costs $2.20. Check this against the spec: 60 ml of gin costs $1.80 and 15 ml of vermouth costs $0.40. That is $2.20 again, because the water adds volume but no cost.

For a stirred cocktail, 20% water relative to the undiluted spec is a starting point for batching, not a fixed rule. The Martini batch starts there, with 500 ml of water for 2,500 ml of gin and vermouth. Chill a sample and compare it with a drink made to order, then adjust the dilution until the flavor and strength are right. The batch cocktail calculator scales your spec and costs a serve.

From the cost to a menu price

Back to the Mai Tai, which costs $3.05 to make and sells for $15. Its pour cost is $3.05 ÷ $15 = 20.3%, and its gross profit is $11.95. That $11.95 is what remains after ingredients, before labor and the bar's other running costs.

pour cost % = drink cost ÷ menu price before tax × 100

Use the menu price before tax, or the pour cost comes out too low. If your menu prices include VATValue-added tax: a sales tax that is included in menu prices in many countries., divide by 1 plus the VAT rate to get the price before tax.

To set a price, start from your target. Divide the ingredients-only cost by the pour cost you want. For a 20% target, $3.05 ÷ 0.20 = $15.25.

menu price before tax = drink cost ÷ target pour cost

Targets differ by kind of drink, so compare each drink with the normal pour cost for its category, not with one number for the whole bar. Then set the price with the gross profit in dollars in view, not only the percentage. The Mai Tai leaves $11.95 a drink, and those dollars pay the bar's costs. The menu price calculator divides for any target and rounds to a price you would print.

When to cost a drink again

Cost a drink again each time the price of anything in it changes, and cost the whole list again at each menu change. Otherwise one supplier price increase makes the costing wrong for every drink that pours that bottle.

Without software, keep one sheet of bottle prices that every spec reads from. When an invoice arrives, change the price on that sheet. If each spec has its own typed prices, the specs go out of date one by one.

Also cost the drink the bar actually pours. If the team builds the Mai Tai with 1 oz (30 ml) of orgeat, the costed ½ oz is wrong until you train the team again or cost the drink again.

Your costed specs also let you check what the bar really pours. Your sales times your specs show what the bar should have used. Your counts show what it actually used. Heavy pours, spills and compsA drink given away for free, for example to a regular or to make up for a mistake. make the two differ. When your counts show more used than your sales explain, that gap is called variance: stock that left without a sale, or a count that is wrong. Trace the variance bottle by bottle to find its cause.

Questions

Sources

1. National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: Factors for units listed alphabetically (Special Publication 811). Ounce (U.S. fluid) to milliliter: 29.57353.
2. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, 27 CFR 5.203, Standards of fill (container sizes). The current list of authorized sizes for distilled spirits, 700 ml among them.
3. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, T.D. TTB-165, Addition of New Standards of Fill for Wine and Distilled Spirits (Federal Register, 29 December 2020). Published and effective 29 December 2020; added the 700 ml size for distilled spirits.
4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (Table 4, private industry workers by occupational and industry group). Accommodation and food services: total compensation $20.03 an hour, wages and salaries $16.18, benefits $3.85 (23.8% of wages; paid leave, supplemental pay, insurance, retirement and legally required benefits).