How to Price a Cocktail

Most bars price cocktails one of two ways: by feel, or by copying the place down the street. Neither works. Pricing by feel leaves money on the table. Pricing by comp set ignores your actual costs — your bottle prices, your pour sizes, and your target margins.

The right way to price a cocktail is to calculate the cost first, then apply your target pour cost percentage to arrive at a sell price.

Cocktail pricing formula: Menu Price = Ingredient Cost ÷ Target Pour Cost %

If a Margarita costs $2.80 in ingredients and your target pour cost is 20%, your menu price should be $14.00. If you're charging $11, you're leaving $3 per drink on the bar — multiplied by every Margarita you sell every night of the week.

What Is Pour Cost Percentage?

Pour cost percentage is the cost of the ingredients in a drink expressed as a percentage of the menu price. It's the bar equivalent of food cost percentage, and it's the primary metric bar operators use to evaluate whether their pricing is working.

Pour cost % = Ingredient cost ÷ Menu price × 100

Industry benchmarks:

• Cocktails: 18–24% is the healthy range

• Beer (draft): 20–25%

• Wine by the glass: 22–28%

• Shots and simple pours: 15–20%

A well-run bar program keeps blended pour cost across all categories at or below 22%. If you're running 30%+ pour cost, you're either pricing too low, over-pouring, or both.

Building Your Bar Inventory

This calculator lets you enter your actual bottle prices against a pre-loaded inventory of common spirits, liqueurs, and mixers. Every bottle is calculated on a per-ounce basis — the only unit that matters for recipe costing.

Price per ounce formula: Cost per oz = Bottle price ÷ Bottle size in oz

A 750ml bottle contains 25.4 oz. A 1L bottle contains 33.8 oz. If you paid $28 for a 1L bottle of well vodka, your cost per ounce is $0.83. A 1.5 oz pour costs $1.24. At a $10 sell price, that's a 12.4% pour cost — healthy, but you're leaving room to use better product.

Mixers and Their Real Cost

The spirits are the obvious cost in a cocktail, but mixers add up too. Fresh lime juice, simple syrup, egg whites, and premium mixers all carry a real cost per recipe. This calculator includes a mixer section so your recipe costs reflect the full pour — not just the booze.

For most classic cocktails, mixer cost adds $0.30–$0.80 to the total recipe cost. On a high-volume bar doing 500 cocktails a week, that's $150–$400 in mixer cost that most operators are ignoring in their pricing.

When to Reprice Your Menu

Your pour cost percentage isn't static — it changes every time your bottle costs change. Distributor price increases, seasonal availability, and supply chain shifts can move your cost per ounce without you noticing. A cocktail you priced correctly two years ago may be running 5 points higher today.

The operators who maintain healthy margins reprice their menus at least twice a year, using their actual current invoice costs — not the prices they remember paying. Use this calculator before every menu reprint.

Bar Program Consulting

Getting your pour costs in line is one piece of a profitable bar program. The other pieces — menu design, staff training, inventory controls, and variance tracking — are where most bars lose money without realizing it. If your bar is doing volume but the margin isn't showing up on the P&L, the problem is usually somewhere in those systems.

That's what we fix at 5 Loaves. [Contact us] if your bar program needs a full review.

FAQ Section

How do you calculate the cost of a cocktail? Add up the cost of every ingredient in the recipe based on cost per ounce, then add mixer costs. Cost per ounce equals the bottle price divided by the bottle size in ounces (a 750ml bottle is 25.4 oz; a 1L bottle is 33.8 oz). This calculator does that math automatically once you enter your bottle prices.

What is a good pour cost percentage for cocktails? For cocktails, 18–24% is the industry target. Below 18% and you may be using low-quality product or skimping on pours in a way guests will notice. Above 24% and your margins are getting squeezed. A blended bar pour cost across all categories should sit at or below 22% for a healthy bar program.

How do I price cocktails for my restaurant menu? Divide the total ingredient cost by your target pour cost percentage. If a cocktail costs $3.00 to make and you're targeting a 20% pour cost, your menu price should be $15.00. Adjust for your market — a $15 cocktail in rural Connecticut prices differently than the same drink in Stamford — but always start from your actual cost, not the competition's price.

What is the difference between pour cost and liquor cost? They're the same metric with different names. Pour cost percentage and liquor cost percentage both express the cost of ingredients as a percent of the sell price. Some operators use "pour cost" specifically for spirits and "liquor cost" for the full bar category including beer and wine. This calculator uses ingredient cost per recipe regardless of category.

How much does the average cocktail cost to make? For a standard two-spirit cocktail with mixers, ingredient cost typically runs $2.50–$5.00 depending on the spirits used. Well spirits will land toward the lower end; premium and craft spirits push toward $6–$8 per drink. At a 20% pour cost target, that maps to menu prices of $12–$40, which reflects the actual range of cocktail pricing in the market.

How often should I update my cocktail pricing? At minimum twice a year, and any time you receive a significant distributor price increase. Bottle prices move constantly — a 10% increase on your well vodka, your highest-volume spirit, directly impacts your pour cost on every cocktail that uses it. Most operators who are running high pour costs haven't updated their pricing since they opened.