Pour cost: the number that runs a bar
A bar leaks money one pour at a time, and the leak never shows on the register — the register only sees the price. The leak shows in pour cost: the share of each drink's price that walks out in the glass. Bars that know their pour cost per drink price with intent; bars that know only their month-end total find out what happened five weeks late.
Cost the bottle once, then count what's in the glass
Every bottle, keg, and case reduces to a unit cost: a $12 liter of well vodka holding 33.8 ounces is 35.5¢ an ounce; a $185 half-barrel pouring 124 pints is $1.49 a pint. A drink's pour cost is the sum of its actual pour lines — the 2 oz of vodka, the 4 oz of grapefruit, the agave, the lime — divided by its price. Everything in the glass counts, because the fresh juice and the garnish are exactly where cocktail margins hide.
| Drink | Price | Pour cost | Pour % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vodka soda — well | $7.00 | $0.78 | 11% |
| IPA — pint | $8.00 | $1.49 | 19% |
| Espresso martini | $14.00 | $2.68 | 19% |
| Paloma — premium | $13.00 | $3.60 | 28% — rework |
Bars typically hold pour cost somewhere between the high teens and mid-20s — beer and wine run higher than spirits, cocktails with fresh ingredients higher than highballs. The target is yours; the point is having one, because the over-target drink is rarely the one you'd guess. The premium paloma above reads fine on the menu at $13 — fresh grapefruit and premium tequila just quietly made it a 28% pour.
Blended pour cost beats the list average
Averaging the pour %s of your ten drinks tells you about your menu. Weighting them by what you actually sell tells you about your money. Forty vodka sodas at 11% pull the real number down; twelve glasses of white at 19% barely move it. The blended number — total pour cost of a night's sales over total revenue — is the one that belongs next to your month-end.
The workhorse is dollars, not percentage
The night-mix math produces the least intuitive finding in bar economics: the drink that runs your business is usually not your best-margin-percentage drink, it's the one earning the most dollars per night. An $8 IPA at $6.51 margin selling 55 pints earns $358 a night — nearly double the $14 espresso martini's take at 18 pours. Price the paloma like a craft cocktail, but schedule the kegs like the business depends on them, because it does.
Every pour costed, the night priced from the mix, and the order self-written
The Bar & Pub Beverage Program Kit runs this math live: 40 bottle/keg slots costed per unit, 120 pour lines building each drink, pour % against your target dial with over-target reds, a night-mix model naming the workhorse, and a par-and-order sheet that turns the walk-in count into a priced order. Excel & Google Sheets, pure formulas.
Reprice the bottle, re-read the list
The discipline pays off the day a supplier letter arrives: when the keg goes up $25, a costed list re-reads every affected drink in seconds — which pours slipped over target, what the new blended number is, and which prices need the conversation. One honest boundary: this is operator economics, not business or legal advice. Liquor licensing, responsible-service rules, and dram-shop liability are governed by your state and your own compliance — the ledger prices the glass, nothing more.