Beverage Cost Calculator

Know the real cost of every drink you sell and the price it should carry. This 10-sheet beverage cost system calculates pour cost on every item, flags mispriced drinks and shows where your bar makes and loses money.

What is inside

• Bottle cost to cost per ounce for spirits, wine and beer
• Pour cost on every drink, flagged On Target, Watch or Over
• Built-in menu engineering that sorts drinks into Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles and Dogs
• A live dashboard of bar performance
• Close to 2,000 formulas, no macros and nothing to install

Who it is for

Bar managers and owners repricing a cocktail list, launching a new menu or chasing a pour cost that keeps creeping up. One point of pour cost on $500,000 of beverage sales is $5,000 a year.

How it works

Works in Excel and Google Sheets. Type bottle costs and prices into the yellow cells and the rest calculates. Try our free pour cost calculator first if you want the quick version.

A look inside

The tabs, one by one

• Dashboard. Average pour cost for spirits, wine by the glass, beer and cocktails, a blended number, a count of items over target, and estimated weekly revenue and profit.
• Spirits. 30 spirits come loaded across well, call, premium and ultra tiers. Replace them with your own bottles, sizes and costs.
• Wine. 20 wines, with by the glass and bottle service costed side by side.
• Beer. 17 beers plus a keg yield calculator that takes foam and waste into account.
• Cocktails. 14 recipes costed ingredient by ingredient: two spirits, a modifier and a garnish.
• Batch and Prep. Cost per ounce for house syrups, juices, infusions and batched cocktails.
• Target Calc. Four what if calculators and a color coded price matrix.
• Settings. Your target pour cost by category, standard pour sizes and keg sizes. Every sheet reads from here.

A worked example

Take a bottle that costs $42.99 for 750 ml, poured at 1.5 ounces, with a 20 percent target. The bottle holds 25.4 ounces, so each ounce costs $1.70 and each drink costs $2.54. To hit 20 percent the drink has to sell for $12.71, and the calculator rounds that up to a menu price of $13.00. That leaves $10.46 of profit on every pour.

Draft works the same way with waste built in. A half barrel holds 1,984 ounces. With 10 percent lost to foam and a 16 ounce pour you get 111 pints to sell. On an $89.99 keg that is 81 cents a pint.

Is this the right tool?

Pick this one if you want every drink on the menu costed and priced in one file. If you count bottles every week and want variance, look at the Bar Inventory Count Sheets. If you want the whole bar program together, the Bar Manager Bundle includes this calculator. The method behind the targets is in our pour cost guide.

Questions and answers

Do I have to keep the drinks that come loaded?
No. They are there so you can see every tab working. Type over them with your own bottles and prices.

What pour cost targets does it use?
It starts at 20 percent for spirits, 25 percent for wine by the glass, 22 percent for beer and 18 percent for cocktails. Change any of them on the Settings tab.

Does it track inventory?
No. It costs and prices drinks. Counting and variance are a separate job.

Does it work in Google Sheets?
Yes. Upload the file to Google Drive and open it with Google Sheets. There are no macros.

How do I get the file?
Checkout is through our Etsy shop and the file is ready to download right after purchase.