What does this drink actually cost you to pour?

Common questions

What is pour cost?

Pour cost — also called liquor cost or beverage cost percentage — is the cost of the ingredients in a drink, divided by what it sells for on the menu. A $9 drink that costs $1.80 to make has a 20% pour cost. It is the standard way a bar or restaurant beverage program checks whether a menu price is doing its job, the same way food cost percentage works for a kitchen.

What is a good pour cost percentage for a bar?

Most bars target somewhere in the 18–24% range for spirits, with beer and wine often run a little higher because they need less handling. There is no single correct number — it depends on rent, payroll, and how the rest of the menu is priced — so this tool lets you set your own target rather than assuming one, and shows you the gap between your target and what a specific recipe actually runs.

Why does a small over-pour cost so much over a year?

Because a single ticket hides the multiplication. A quarter-ounce over a 1.5oz pour looks generous rather than expensive on any one drink — it is a few cents. Multiplied by every well drink poured in a week, then by 52 weeks, a few cents becomes real, recoverable money that never shows up as a line item anywhere, because it left the bottle without ever touching a price on the menu.

How is the target price calculated?

It runs the same recipe cost backwards: recipe cost divided by your target pour cost percentage. It is not a suggested price — it is what this exact recipe, at this exact cost, would need to sell for to land exactly on the target you typed. The gap between that number and your actual menu price is the whole story: positive means the drink is priced above what the target alone requires, negative means it is priced below.

Do I have to fill in a modifier and a mixer?

No. The primary spirit is the only ingredient that is required — plenty of pours are spirit-and-mixer, or spirit alone. Leave a modifier or mixer’s three fields entirely blank to skip it. Filling in one or two of the three and leaving the rest blank is treated as an unfinished entry rather than a choice, so the form asks for the rest rather than silently dropping the ingredient.

Is my data uploaded anywhere?

No account and no network requests — the calculator runs entirely in your browser. Nothing about your bottle costs, recipes, menu prices, or drink counts is sent anywhere or stored anywhere but this device. If you use the save button, your recipe is written to this browser’s own local storage on this device only, and the forget button deletes it. The Copy shareable link button puts the same numbers in the page’s URL fragment, which your browser never sends to a server — nothing is uploaded that way either. The optional usage counter records only which features were used and the day, never any of your numbers.

Is this alcohol-service, tax, or accounting advice?

No. It is arithmetic on the bottle costs, pour sizes, and prices you type in. It has no opinion on responsible-service policy, pour-size law in your jurisdiction, staffing, tax treatment, or what to charge — check those against your own records, your state’s alcohol-control rules, and a qualified professional before acting on anything here.