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Gross Profit On Liquor Sales

Hi all - Just was wondering what a typical bar should have in gross profit on liquor sales.  I have a bar with no food.  Just beer and liquor sales.

Thanks,

Bryan from The Ducktail Lounge.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

adamj
Community Ambassador

Hello Iowa!

The average gross profit margin for a bar is between 70 and 80%. Mostly because of liquor cost . A beverage program with low pour cost is the beating heart of a profitable bar or restaurant.

The average net profit margin for a bar is between 10 and 15%. The gross profit margin is the difference between total restaurant sales revenue and COGS. 

This number depends on the type of bar you’re running, though.

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9 REPLIES 9

One of my restaurants, Farm Bar will do about $2.2MM in sales.  40% of sales are liquor, beer and wine.  Our COGs for LBW is typically less than 20%.   It's more for wine, less for liquor, beer in the middle.    If you are asking about net operating income (EBITDA), that depends on many other factors beyond COGs (occupancy costs, labor, food sales, operating costs, etc.)

Best Practices

Hi Bryon!

I am hoping you can help a fellow bar (liquor/beer) owner out! We are in Wisconsin, so not competition. We open next friday and I am struggling with developing our menu. Do you list every single alcohol? TIA!

-Annie

We don't.  Depends on the type of concept you are, but for us that's overkill.  Farm Bar does about 40% of sales as Liquor, Beer and Wine.  We do list the drafts, ciders and wines by the glass and we list the ingredients in the specialty cocktails.

Hi Annie - We don't list every single alcohol.   It would too difficult as it changes often.  We do have some wine menus but that is even hard to keep upto date.  We had a liquor vendor do some nice menus for specific drinks.  You can always ask them for assistance on designing the menu.  I decided to do my own design work on Canva so I don't have to wait to make an update.  Bryan

At Farm Bar, our beer cost is in the low 20s; wine cost in the high 20s -low 30s, liquor cost is quite low because of the cocktails, between 18% and 22%.