Pricing
Food cost and wine cost, two numbers operators mix up
Kitchen food cost is not pour cost on wine. Why one beverage-cost % strangles by-the-glass. For US restaurants, in dollars, before sales tax.
Written by Marco Azzari on
Food cost in the kitchen and pour cost on wine are both "what we paid versus what we sold." They are not interchangeable, and chasing one beverage-cost percentage is how a good glass program gets killed in a review.
This is for F&B and for owners who hear "food cost" from their accountant or CPA and apply it to the bar.
Same family, different animal
Kitchen food cost asks: of the food revenue, how much did the ingredients take. It is dragged around by yield, theft, waste, menu mix, and whether you still garnish like it is 2015.
Wine pour cost asks the same shape of question for wine revenue. Mix matters more than people admit: glasses, bottles, house, trophy labels. A week of bottles at a heavy cost % can hide a month of glasses that actually pay.
Sales tax sits on top of both at checkout and belongs to the state, not to you, so leave it out of both numbers. That still does not make the target % the same. A healthy kitchen % can be a disastrous wine % and the other way around. Compare each line to itself over time, and to the gross profit in dollars.
The single-number trap
Finance likes one "beverage cost." You will be asked why it is 2 points over plan. If the honest answer is "we sold more glasses of the wine that pays," and the slide still looks red, you have the wrong KPI.
Argue mix and gross profit, or someone will tell you to cut the glass list. Markup versus margin. Price by the glass.
Calculators
A food cost calculator is a spreadsheet with discipline, not an app with a personality. True cost, recipe or bottle, menu price before tax, what is left. If you came here for a widget, do the three-line version on wine-list pricing tonight. Do not trust a widget that assumes 4× on every bottle and never asks what you actually pour.
Kitchen-side engineering (stars, plowhorses) is menu engineering. Terms: glossary.
About the author
Marco Azzari
Founder of Wine CFO · Wine List Engineer for restaurants
I help restaurants, hotels and bars earn more from the wine they already sell. I price lists wine by wine, cost by-the-glass programs on their real yield, rebuild selections around the food menu, and rewrite lines so guests understand what they're ordering. Every Wine Profit Checkup goes across my desk personally.
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