The skipping matters. In London, a £13.00 cocktail is really £10.83 of trading revenue. Run your costing on the till number and you will understate ingredient cost as a share of trading revenue without a single recipe changing. That's the difference between a profitable cocktail programme and a very well-reviewed loss leader.
Step one: cost the whole build, not the headline spirit
The base spirit is the easy part and rarely the expensive part. A 70cl bottle of decent London dry at £24 trade gives 28 measures of 25ml: £0.86. Done in ten seconds.
The build hides in four places:
- Modifiers. Half an ounce of a £38 amaro is real money. Vermouth, Cynar, maraschino, creme de violette: three small pours can out-cost the gin. Cost every bottle on the bar at £ per 10ml and keep the sheet alive.
- Citrus and produce. A lime doesn't cost one pound-twelfth of a lime. It costs your yield after peeling, juicing and the ones that brown on Tuesday. Measure usable juice in millilitres from a repeatable batch, then allocate the fruit cost over that yield rather than applying an assumed multiplier.
- House prep. Syrups, shrubs, fatwashes, cordials: cheap per serve, but only if you cost the batch including what's binned. A batch that spoils at 20% carries that 20% into every pour.
- The garnish graveyard. Dehydrated wheels, expressed twists, the thing with tweezers. Pennies each, thousands a year, and the drinks that carry them are usually the ones priced on vibes.
Write the spec first (in ml, at your legal measure), then cost the spec. A recipe without a measure is a rumour, and you can't cost a rumour.
Step two: pick a target pour cost that matches your venue
Target pour costs aren't universal; they're a policy. The common working bands for UK venues, ex-VAT:
| Venue type | Cocktail target pour cost | Why |
|---|---|---|
| High-volume neighbourhood bar | 17-20% | Volume carries it; speed and simplicity rule |
| Standard cocktail bar | 18-22% | The default compromise |
| Premium programme, low volume | 22-26% | Ingredient quality and labour justify a higher cost share; contribution £ per serve must then be watched |
| Hotel bar | 15-20% | Menu prices carry the room service, not the maths |
| Event or captive-location bar | Venue-specific | Cost the actual service model and compare realistic alternatives for the guest |
One target per venue, written down, argued with once, then applied. The argument you should actually be having with your team is contribution, not percentage: a 24% pour-cost espresso martini at £14 nets more pounds a week than a 16% serve nobody orders, and the menu should know it.
Step three: do the maths in the right order
build cost = Σ (ingredient £ per ml × spec ml), all lines
net price = build cost ÷ target pour cost
menu price = net price × 1.20
psychology adjustment = round down/up to your price ladder
The Negroni from our pour-cost guide: £1.05 build, 20% target → £5.25 net → £6.30 menu. Of course you won't charge £6.30. The formula gives a floor, not a price: your room supports £10 or £12, and at £12 (net £10.00) that Negroni runs a 10.5% pour cost and funds the rest of the list. This is the part most guides fumble: the formula's output and the menu price are different objects, connected by your positioning, competitor sweep and nerve.
Run the floor on everything. The drinks whose floor sits within 15% of their menu price are your risk list, because a supplier increase can move them beyond the chosen target; target-price arithmetic is not a calculation of whole-venue break-even. In most venues that list is three to five drinks deep and nobody has looked at it since the menu launched.
Step four: sanity-check the room, not the internet
Competitor pricing is a reference point, not a formula. Two rules we'd hold to:
- Sweep eight to twelve comparable venues within ten minutes' walk. Note prices, measures (25 vs 35 vs free), garnish theatre and how full theirs is on a Thursday. Your price is one input into their comparison of you, and the comparison happens in about four seconds at the table.
- Never price a drink because a bar two districts over charges more. You're not selling what they sell, to who they have, at the rent you pay. The only venue whose costs matter is yours.
Test price endings against your own list rather than assuming a particular psychological effect. For operational clarity, a tidy ladder (nine, eleven, twelve, fourteen) beats a menu of thirteen individual arithmetic results.
Step five: put it on a calendar, not a feeling
Reprice when:
- a spirit in five or more recipes moves 8-10% at trade
- blended cocktail pour cost sits above target two months running
- you change a spec or a supplier
- the market visibly moves (your nearest three competitors all went up)
Otherwise, review twice a year, small and often. Fifty pence moves that track supplier inflation read as normal business. A £1.50 jump after two frozen years invites exactly the scrutiny you're trying to avoid, and the chalkboard-versus-POS mismatch that comes with it makes your variance reports lie for a fortnight.
Worked example, start to finish
House Margarita, 25ml tequila (£0.94), 15ml triple sec (£0.24), 20ml fresh lime at true yield (£0.38), 10ml agave (£0.11), salt rim and wheel (£0.14). Build: £1.81. Target 20% → net floor £9.05 → menu floor £10.86. Market sits at £11.50-£13.00; you list at £11.50, net £9.58, actual pour cost 18.9%, contribution £7.77. On 150 a week that's £1,165 of gross profit, and you know exactly which number moves if Sierra prices rise in January.
That paragraph is the whole method. Everything else is maintenance.
Check the price after rounding
A price ladder is a commercial choice, so recalculate after the final rounding step. For the £2.60 example, £15.60 gross gives £13 net and exactly 20% pour cost. At £14.50 gross, net revenue is £12.0833 and pour cost rises to 21.52%. That may still be a sensible price, but it no longer meets the original target. Record ingredient contribution per serve, a realistic weekly volume and preparation time beside it. Include discounts in the realised selling price. The useful menu decision is whether the full contribution and service model work, rather than whether the rounded number looks close to a spreadsheet output.
FAQ
How much should a cocktail cost on a UK menu in 2026?
Median advertised cocktail across a sample of three leading London lists we observed in October 2026 was £16.00, with a £9-£19 spread by venue tier. Outside London, use a dated sample of comparable local venues rather than treating a London basket as a national price target. The honest number for your bar comes from your build costs and your room, not the average.
What's the cocktail pricing formula with VAT?
Menu price = (build cost ÷ target pour cost) × 1.20. Cost first, divide by target pour cost to get net, then add VAT. Dividing by the gross price, as US formulas do, underprices UK menus.
Is 20% pour cost right for my bar?
It's the reasonable default for a UK cocktail programme: 17-20% if you're volume-led, 22-26% if you're premium and low-volume. Pick one number, write it down, judge drinks on contribution pounds as well as percentage.
Do I price shots and highballs the same way?
Same floor calculation, different psychology. Highballs and spritzes can carry a lower percentage because speed sells volume; premium neats break from the target on purpose because the £ contribution on a £14 pour beats the percentage.
Method and assumptions
Example costs are illustrative builds at plausible 2026 UK trade prices, labelled as such; benchmark bands are trade estimates, not audited data. The London price observations (12 listings, 3 venues, 19 October 2026) are published, with sources, at our cocktail price index. VAT treatment follows HMRC standard-rate rules, reviewed 16 October 2026. For the decision rule on the next price move, see when to raise drink prices.
Last reviewed 19 October 2026. The pour cost calculator runs this whole method in £ and millilitres.