What is a good pour cost?

If your bar sells $5,000 a night before tax, a pour cost of 21% instead of 20% costs you $50 a night. If you are open seven nights a week, that 1% difference costs about $18,000 a year. Here is how to work out your pour cost, what a good number is, and what to check when it rises.

Pour cost for one drink

Take a Whiskey Sour that sells for $14 before tax. Its bourbon comes in a 750 ml bottle that costs you $30, so $30 ÷ 750 = $0.04 a ml. The drink uses 2 oz (60 ml) of bourbon, so the bourbon costs $2.40. The lemon juice, sugar syrup and egg white cost another $0.60. In total, the drink costs $3.00 to make. $3.00 ÷ $14 = 0.21, so the pour cost is 21%.

Pour cost % = cost of the drink ÷ menu price (before tax) × 100

Always use the price before tax. If your menu prices include VATValue-added tax: a sales tax that is included in menu prices in many countries., take it out first. For example, a €14 drink with 23% VAT included is €11.38 before tax (€14 ÷ 1.23).

Add the cost of every ingredient in the drink, including syrups and the garnish. If you leave out small items, the drink looks cheaper to make than it is. For juice or syrup you make yourself, divide the cost of its ingredients by the amount you made.

The pour cost calculator does this math for you.

Pour cost for the whole bar

Work it out for one week. At the start of the week, you count your stock: it is worth $12,000. During the week you buy $6,500 of stock. At the end of the week, your stock is worth $11,500. So you used $12,000 + $6,500 − $11,500 = $7,000 of stock. Your sales for the week were $35,000 before tax. $7,000 ÷ $35,000 = 0.20, so the pour cost is 20%.

Pour cost % = (opening stock + purchases − closing stock) ÷ sales for the period (before tax) × 100

Three details keep this number right. First, value your stock at what you paid for it, not at menu price.

Second, include stock that moves between the bar and the kitchen. If you give wine to the kitchen for cooking, subtract it from the stock you used. If you take juice from the kitchen, add it.

Third, for sales, use the total before tax from every register, for the same days and the same drink categories as your counts.

The pour cost you calculate from a recipe is what that drink should cost when made to spec. The pour cost you calculate from your counts is what the bar actually used, including spills, over-pouring, free drinks and other losses.

These numbers won't always match. To compare them fairly, work out what your actual sales should have used from your recipes, then compare that with what your counts say you used. The difference is where you start looking for problems. Don't take a simple average of your drinks' pour costs for this: a drink you sell 100 times a night moves the bar's figure far more than one you sell 5 times.

What is a good pour cost?

Pour costs differ by drink type and type of venue. A 2012 US study of restaurants, bars and hotels found the following averages. These are useful points of comparison, not targets every bar should try to meet.

Wine often has a higher pour cost than cocktails, particularly when sold by the bottle. For example, a bottle bought for $40 and sold for $80 has a pour cost of 50%, but still earns $40 toward the bar's other costs.

Wine by the glass works differently. Some bars price one glass at what the whole bottle cost them. With five glasses to a bottle, that is a pour cost of 20%. The study's 27% for wine is for bottles and glasses together.

Is a lower pour cost always better?

No. You pay wages and rent with money, not with percentages. So look at the gross profitThe menu price of a drink minus what its ingredients cost. of each drink as well.

In this table, the lager has the lowest pour cost, but it earns the least money. The Old Fashioned is above the 18 to 24% range, but it earns the most. When you review your menu, look at how much each drink earns after ingredients, how many you sell and how much work goes into making it. Pour cost matters, but it isn't the only number that tells you whether a drink deserves its place on the menu. See how to price drinks.

How to set your own target

Jeffrey Morgenthaler, a bartender and author, calls 18 to 24% the industry standard for cocktails. It is a starting point. Your own limit comes from your costs.

Start with what your bar sells before tax. Say that's $5,000 a night. Your wages, rent and other running costs come to $3,100, not counting the drinks themselves. You want to make $800 in profit.

That leaves $1,100 for ingredients. Divide $1,100 by $5,000 and you get 22%. That's the highest pour cost that meets your profit goal, assuming those other costs and sales stay the same. At 24%, your drinks cost $1,200 a night, and you are $100 a night short of the profit you want.

Highest pour cost % = (sales − running costs − profit you want) ÷ sales × 100

For a monthly cost such as rent, divide it by the number of nights you are open that month. If the bar shares rent and staff with a restaurant, split those costs the same way every time.

The type of bar matters too. What decides it is your total wages and other running costs. If your drinks take more staff time, for example because you make your own juice and syrups, wages are higher, which leaves less money for ingredients. A sports bar that sells mostly beer can have a pour cost a few points higher, because a beer takes far less staff time than a cocktail. Compare your number with bars that sell what you sell. Read more about profit after wages and rent.

Why is my pour cost going up?

Check these causes in order, quickest first.

1. A wrong count or wrong sales. If your pour cost jumps one week and falls back the next, a count was probably wrong. Recount the products you use most, and check the sales figure.
2. A higher supplier price. If bourbon costs 10% more, the bourbon in the Whiskey Sour costs $0.24 more. The drink now costs $3.24, and the pour cost is about 23%. Work out the cost of your drinks again when the new invoice arrives.
3. Over-pouring. An extra ¼ oz (7.5 ml) of bourbon adds $0.30. The Whiskey Sour now costs $3.30, a pour cost of nearly 24%. See how to check for over-pouring.
4. Specials and free drinks. A two-for-one special doubles the pour cost of those drinks. A free drink that is not entered in the POSPoint-of-sale system: the register or software that records every sale. looks like missing stock.
5. Waste. If the last glass in a wine bottle spoils, four glasses must pay for the bottle, so the pour cost goes from 20% to 25%. Each time you clean a draft line, you also lose the beer in the line.
6. Theft. Check this last. It is the hardest cause to prove.

If several drinks using the same spirit have become more expensive, check the latest invoice. If your ingredient prices haven't changed but actual stock usage has risen, start with counts, pours and recorded waste.

To find which products are behind the rise, compare what you used with what you sold, product by product. This is called liquor variance.

How often should you check pour cost?

Check your highest-value products every week, ideally on the same day. If you count the rest of the bar monthly, calculate your full pour cost over that monthly period.

Keep the opening and closing counts, purchases and sales matched to the same dates. See how often to count.

Questions

Sources

1. Jeffrey Morgenthaler, How to Price a Cocktail Menu. June 2011. The 18 to 24% cocktail range.
2. Cheryl S. Stanley, Alcoholic Beverage Costing Practices in the Hospitality Industry (Texas Tech University thesis, 2012). Survey of 203 US restaurants, bars and hotels; between 186 and 195 answered each category. Category averages from Table 4.1 (spirits 19.4%, beer 21.9%, wine 26.6%, all beverages 24.8%), rounded on this page; restaurant spirits figures from Tables 4.3 to 4.9. Its literature review gives the textbook spirits target of 16 to 20% from Plotkin and Goumas, Successful Beverage Management (2000), Table 2.1, and the wine markups from the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation's ManageFirst textbooks.
3. Robert Plotkin, Control Pour Costs and Watch Profits Rise. Bar & Restaurant, April 2012. The low-teens warning, the one-point rule of thumb, premium spirits, two-for-ones and the eight causes of a rising pour cost.
4. Brewers Association, Draught Beer Quality Manual, fourth edition, 2019. System design and cleanliness: each line cleaning empties the line of beer.