How does that fancy bar justify charging $21 for one craft cocktail? Ingredients are only the start
Imagine that you’re in the best bar in town. The most interesting people are chatting, listening the newest music while drinking the world’s fanciest cocktails. Somehow, in the midst of all this, you manage to catch a bartender’s eye just in time to realize that the menu seems to be written in sort of alien hieroglyphics. Through the haze, you can make out a single familiar label in the sea of esoteric, small batch bottles. You can’t waste this chance. You blurt. The bartender nods, returns with a two-ounce pour on a piece of hand-cut ice shaped like a diamond baby skull.
“That’ll be thirty-four dollars, sir.”
It’s moments like these that lead normally sane, reserved and polite folks to threaten strangers with shards of artisanal ice (or doing something really batshit, like writing a Yelp review). Bars have come a long way in the last couple of decades. With the arrival of the Cocktail Renaissance of the 21st century, backbars expanded exponentially. Bars stocking your not much more than your grandparents’ liquor shelf gave way to hedonistic paradises of esoteric small batches, where glorious spirits from across the globe end up in every town.
While the average drinker’s taste has evolved in recent years, an onslaught of new or newly stocked spirits can still be overwhelming to them. With better-quality spirits finding equal footing and fancy imports becoming more popular, figuring out how badly you’re being screwed by a pour of the backbar can feel like a Gordian knot.
“Feel free to ask your bartender: Why’s this booze bleeding me dry?”
First things first: Chances are the bartender taking the time to pour you that drink and smile through their teeth while they do it doesn’t get to decide how much they’re charging for it. So, please, let them off the hook. They’re just working stiffs trained in fancy booze and pleasing even the most insufferable customers.
Once in awhile you’re lucky enough to find yourself in a bar where the proprietor also tends bar. Feel free to ask them: Why’s this booze bleeding me dry?
“It is so easy to look at a bottle of $25 bottle of Scotch and think that since the bar sells it for $9 a pour that they must be making money hand over fist. But what they don’t usually see is that the cost of liquor is just one of many expenses in running a bar, and in fact it is quite often not even the largest,” says Erick Castro, a partner at Polite Provisions in San Francisco and Boilermaker in Manhattan. “Any bar manager knows that the first few shots you pour out of the bottle should cover the cost of the bottle itself. The next few shots cover rent, and then it moves on to payroll, followed by utilities, etc. The trick to a profitable venue is to become profitable before you reach the neck of the bottle—because if you are not making money until you pour the last dregs out of the bottle, then you are in deep shit.”
Take a look around your chosen bar. Is it a dive with one grumpy bartender on payroll and nothing but sweating ice, gloriously shelf-stable booze and nary a fresh ingredient in sight? For every amenity above this wonderful bare minimum (which might be all you need, in which case you should find this bar and skip all the fancy ones) requires money. Additional support, security, entertainment and perishable goods all mean higher overhead, which means the bar needs to make more to keep the doors open.
“There are a lot of factors that go into how a customer perceives the cost of booze in a bar. A lot of that decision-making is a factor of where else they are drinking,” says Yael Vandergroff, beverage directory of The Spare Room in Los Angeles. “Are they typically drinking two-for-one happy hour specials at a local sports bar, or are they shelling out hundreds for bottles of vodka and Champagne in the clubs? Additionally, most drinkers have a local spot they frequent. How much does a whiskey coke cost there? Typically these diehard customers are the type that moan and groan when prices are raised by a mere 50 cents.”
Bars and restaurants shoot to maintain a cost of goods (the percentage that the raw product costs versus what they sell it for) based on all these factors, but you can often find it hovering between 20 and 25 percent. Of course you can’t calculate that number if you have no fucking idea what how much what you’re ordering costs.
Not everyone is going to commit bottle costs to memory, but there are some tricks you can use to figure out the expense of a given bottle booze. Geography is your first indicator. If you’re ordering imported spirits, they’re typically going to cost more. And if you happen to be one of those unlucky folks living in a control state—where the price of even backyard hooch is government mandated at a premium—you’re going to pay even more.
Secondly, the stuff that goes into the booze costs money, too. Most spirits historically tend to reflect a surplus of local crops, and this stays more or less true today. American spirits tend to be made from cereal grains, with corn being among the cheapest. But a lot of American drinkers have moved from discovering blissfully cheap bourbon to slightly more expensive rye and right to mezcal, often unaware that it is among the priciest products available in most bars. Not only is mezcal imported, raising the agave used to make it is exponentially more expensive than grain. It’s both difficult to harvest (and depends on a special skill set) and takes a long time (it can take the better part of a decade for the plant to mature).
Along with single malt Scotches, which sometimes sit in barrels for two decades, quality agave products are probably the most expensive thing your favorite fancy bar stocks. Not everyone is going to commit bottle costs to memory, but there are some tricks you can use to figure out the expense of a given bottle booze. Geography is your first indicator. If you’re ordering imported spirits, they’re typically going to cost more. And if you happen to be one of those unlucky folks living in a control state—where the price of even backyard hooch is government mandated at a premium—you’re going to pay even more. Secondly, the stuff that goes into the booze costs money, too. Most spirits historically tend to reflect a surplus of local crops, and this stays more or less true today. American spirits tend to be made from cereal grains, with corn being among the cheapest. But a lot of American drinkers have moved from discovering blissfully cheap bourbon to slightly more expensive rye and right to mezcal, often unaware that it is among the priciest products available in most bars. Not only is mezcal imported, raising the agave used to make it is exponentially more expensive than grain. It’s both difficult to harvest (and depends on a special skill set) and takes a long time (it can take the better part of a decade for the plant to mature). Along with single malt Scotches, which sometimes sit in barrels for two decades, quality agave products are probably the most expensive thing your favorite fancy bar stocks. There are websites geared toward professionals that will show how much distributors charge for bottles and cases of spirits, but they tend to be subscription services. If you’re living the in an aforementioned control state, the state websites will usually be more accessible, but still the next bit of advice will work as well: go take a walk through your local liquor store. Shops will charge retail (a higher cost than the bars are getting charged for it) but the prices are still relative. That bottle of supposedly small-batch bourbon with the kitschy label you’ve been drinking for 15 years may have gone up $20 a bottle since the days your were bringing one home weekly for the roommates. And by taking a walk up and down the aisles at your local booze shop you can get a pretty good idea what the relative cost of rival brands of your favorite poison are.) geared toward professionals that will show how much distributors charge for bottles and cases of spirits, but they tend to be subscription services. If you’re living the in an aforementioned control state, the state websites will usually be more accessible, but still the next bit of advice will work as well: go take a walk through your local liquor store. Shops will charge retail (a higher cost than the bars are getting charged for it) but the prices are still relative. That bottle of supposedly small-batch bourbon with the kitschy label you’ve been drinking for 15 years may have gone up $20 a bottle since the days your were bringing one home weekly for the roommates. And by taking a walk up and down the aisles at your local booze shop you can get a pretty good idea what the relative cost of rival brands of your favorite poison are.
“It’s always OK to just ask what your bar pours, and it’s always appropriate to ask what something costs.”
But there’s a another piece of the puzzle still.
“As a drinker, it is a good idea to know the size of the pour that you are paying for,” says Castro. “You might think that a bar selling that same product for only $8 down the street might be offering a better deal, until you realize that their pours are only an ounce and a quarter, while the spot that charges $10 is a full two ounces.”
The old standby dive bar tends to pour somewhere between one and quarter and one and a half ounces as a general thing, while cocktail bars tend to pour two ounces (which is why a lot of the fancy bars won’t serve your accustomed double). It’s always OK to just ask what your bar pours. And while we’re at it, it’s always appropriate to ask what something costs. It is the simplest way to figure out if something is too pricey and it can save you some awkward interactions.
Remember: Choose your bar like you choose a lover. A good drinking establishment is a safe space, where guards are dropped along with inhibitions—so your relationship with one should be built on trust. Don’t spend time in joints you suspect of over-charging you for the good stuff and don’t sweat nickels and dimes when you’ve found true love.