Free Bar Pour Cost Calculator

It depends on the category. Spirits and cocktails 18-22%, wine by the glass 22-28%, beer 20-25%, non-alcoholic and mocktails 12-18%. Setting a single target across all categories is a common mistake that under-prices spirits and over-prices wine. Weight the category midpoints by your sales mix to get a blended bar target that you can actually hit week after week.

Yes, always. For most cocktails the modifier cost (garnish, juice, syrup, bitter dashes, mixer) adds 8-12% on top of the spirit cost. Operators who omit modifier cost consistently understate pour cost by 1-2 points, which compounds across a 12-cocktail menu to thousands of dollars of unrecognised margin leak per year. The calculator has a dedicated modifier cost field for exactly this reason.

Enter container size as the keg volume in ml (typically 19500 for a quarter-barrel, 58600 for a half-barrel, or 50000 for a 50L Euro keg), container cost as the wholesale keg price, and pour size as the actual glass volume (16oz / 473ml is standard in the US, 568ml for a UK imperial pint). The calculator will tell you pours per keg and per-pour cost. Most operators get surprised by how many pours a keg gives - and equally surprised by how a foamy pour wipes out yield.

Three likely reasons. First, your POS reports actual usage (which includes free-pour drift, comp drinks, and theft), while the calculator computes ideal pour cost from the recipe spec. The gap between the two is your variance - a healthy bar runs less than 3 points of variance. Second, your POS might be using a different inventory yield assumption (assumes 22 pours per litre at 1.5oz; calculator assumes recipe spec). Third, the POS rolls up wine and spirits together while the calculator separates them. Check all three before re-pricing.

Yes. Run each spirit through the calculator separately, sum the costs per pour, then add the modifier cost on top. A Negroni with 1oz each of gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth runs three calculator passes: gin pour cost + Campari pour cost + vermouth pour cost + orange-peel garnish modifier. Most cocktail-program tools will eventually want to handle multi-ingredient recipes natively; for ad-hoc costing of a new drink, the manual pass takes under 2 minutes.

No. The pour cost calculator runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, nothing is logged, nothing is stored after you close the page. Safe to use on real cost data and menu prices without exposure.