Drinks are where hospitality earns the most, but only if every glass is priced properly. Enter the purchase price, bottle or keg size and pour size. The calculator deducts spillage and shows the menu price, the pour cost per glass and what each bottle earns you.
How the drinks price calculator works
The contents of the bottle or keg and the pour size tell you how many glasses you can sell. Spillage comes off that: spilled leftovers, over-generous pouring, foam and, for draught beer, line cleaning. The purchase price divided by the sellable glasses is your pour cost per glass.
Just like in the menu price calculator, you divide this value by your target pour cost and get the net price. VAT is added on top, then the calculator rounds up to an even menu price. The table below shows the same calculation for other pour sizes, such as 2 cl and 4 cl or an eighth and a quarter litre of wine.
What pour cost is usual for drinks?
In most venues, drinks carry a large part of the gross profit. As a rule of thumb, spirits run at 15 to 20 % pour cost, beer and soft drinks at 15 to 25 % and wine by the glass at 20 to 30 %. Bottled wines are often priced with a fixed markup so that expensive wines do not become unsellable.
These figures are guide values, not law. A cocktail bar with a lot of handwork needs more margin than a pub pouring draught beer. What matters is that the average across the whole menu matches your costs.
Do not underestimate spillage
Spillage of 5 % sounds like little. With a 50-litre keg, though, that is ten half-litres that are never paid for. Measure your actual loss by comparing the amounts poured according to the till with the consumption according to your stock, about once a month.
Measured pourers, calibrated glasses with a fill line and regular stocktaking reduce the loss noticeably. For wine by the glass, a vacuum stopper or an inert gas system pays off, so that opened bottles do not end up down the drain.
Drinks menu and price display
The drinks menu must show price and quantity, for example 0.5 l or 4 cl. This applies in Austria as well as in Germany. Always state your drink prices including VAT, for guests only the final price counts.
In Austria, drinks are taxed at 20 % VAT, in Germany at 19 %. Some products, such as certain milk drinks, are exceptions, so you can change the tax rate freely in the calculator.