How to Calculate Pour Cost and Price a Cocktail Profitably

Pour cost is the single number that tells you whether a drink is making you money or quietly draining it. It's the ratio of what the liquor in a glass cost you to what you charge for the glass — and once you know it for every cocktail on your menu, pricing becomes a decision instead of a guess.

What pour cost actually measures

Pour cost (also called liquor cost or COGS percentage) is the percentage of a drink's selling price that the ingredients cost you. A pour cost of 20% means that for every $10 cocktail, $2 is liquid cost and $8 is gross margin to cover labor, rent, glassware, and profit.

The catch is that "cost of ingredients" only stays accurate if your inventory counts are accurate. If you don't know how much liquor is actually leaving each bottle, your theoretical pour cost and your real pour cost drift apart — and that drift is exactly what shrinkage is.

What's a healthy pour cost?

The industry rule of thumb is 18–24% for spirits and 15–20% for beer and wine. Cocktails usually land between 18% and 22% because the mixers and garnishes add cheap volume. Anything consistently above 25% is a red flag — either your prices are too low, your pours are too heavy, or liquor is walking out the door.

Pricing a cocktail, step by step

Most bars price backwards — they pick a menu price and hope the cost works out. The right way is to cost the drink first, then set a price that hits your target pour cost.

1. 1Cost every drop. A 1.5 oz pour of an $30/bottle spirit costs $30 ÷ (750ml ÷ 44ml) = $1.76 per pour. Add the mixer, garnish, and any juice or bitters to get total ingredient cost.
2. 2Pick your target pour cost. Say you want 20%. Divide ingredient cost by 0.20 to get the menu price. A $2.40 cost at 20% target = $12 menu price.
3. 3Round for psychology. Move $11.80 to $12, or $13.10 to $13. The rounding tweaks your real pour cost slightly — recalculate it on the final price.
4. 4Sanity-check against usage. Run the same drink through your actual inventory counts. If the bottle emptied faster than the menu says it should, your real pour cost is higher than the theoretical — and you've found your problem.

Why theoretical pour cost lies

Your POS knows how many old fashioneds you sold and what they should have cost. But it doesn't know the bartender poured 2.25 oz instead of 2 oz, or that a bottle went missing from the well. The only way to close the loop is a physical count: weigh the bottles, compare actual usage to POS theoretical usage, and the gap is your shrinkage expressed in dollars. That's the number that turns pour cost from a menu-planning tool into a profitability tool.