What Is Pour Cost?
Pour cost (also called beverage cost percentage) measures how much you spend on a poured drink relative to the revenue it generates. It is one of the most direct signals of bar profitability and theft exposure.
Formula:
``` Pour Cost % = (Cost of Beverage Sold ÷ Beverage Revenue) × 100 ```
A well-run full-service bar typically targets 18–24% pour cost for spirits and 20–28% for beer and wine, though your ideal number depends on your pricing strategy and concept.
Worked Example
Suppose a 1.5 oz pour of a house whiskey costs you $0.90 in product and you sell it for $9.00.
``` $0.90 ÷ $9.00 × 100 = 10% pour cost ```
Now run that across your full bar program for a week: if you did $8,000 in beverage revenue and your beverage COGS was $2,000, your blended pour cost is 25%. If your target is 22%, that 3-point gap represents $240 in margin leakage on that week alone — roughly $12,500 annualized.
Why Pour Cost Matters to Your Margins
Pour cost compounds quickly. Over-pouring by a quarter-ounce per drink, unbilled staff drinks, or a single high-cost bottle priced incorrectly can push a profitable bar program into the red. Tracking it weekly — not monthly — is what separates operators who catch problems early from those who discover them at year-end inventory.
How Hubstaurant Automates Pour Cost Tracking
Spreadsheet-based pour cost tracking is accurate only if someone enters every invoice, every count, and every price change manually. Hubstaurant removes that dependency entirely.
- Invoice reading: Hubstaurant reads your vendor invoices automatically, capturing the actual price per bottle so your cost basis is always current — no manual re-entry when a distributor raises prices.
- Purchase-driven inventory: Every received order updates your on-hand quantities, giving you a real-time cost-of-goods figure without a full physical count.
- Theft and leakage detection: Because Hubstaurant ties POS sales data to inventory consumption, it flags when poured volume and recorded sales diverge — a core signal of over-pouring or unrecorded comps.
- Food-cost analytics layer: The same engine that tracks food cost tracks beverage cost, so you see blended and category-level pour cost in one dashboard rather than toggling between a POS add-on and a separate inventory app.
Dedicated bar inventory tools like BevSpot do pour cost well in isolation. Where Hubstaurant adds value is connecting that number to your scheduling costs, server performance, and forecasting in a single system — so you act on the insight without switching tabs.
Start Tracking Pour Cost Automatically
If you are still calculating pour cost from a spreadsheet once a month, you are managing a lagging indicator. Hubstaurant turns it into a live metric. Start your free trial and see your pour cost calculated from your first uploaded invoice.