A bar's profit margin is one month's drink and food sales minus pour cost, bar food, bartender and door staff wages, rent and every other bill, divided by sales. For example, the calculator below opens with a neighborhood bar in US dollars: $48,000 of sales a month, 24% for liquor, beer, wine, mixers and bar snacks, 30% for labor, $5,200 for rent and $11,000 for everything else. Put in your own month to see the margin, and what the few delivery orders a bar takes are really leaving you.
Part of the free Restaurant profit margin calculator.
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Your net margin
Example numbersFood, drink and labor together.
What you would keep if no order paid commission.
Delivery apps take $600 a month: 10% of the profit you would otherwise keep.
At 25% commission, once 49% of your sales come through the apps, the month makes nothing.
The same $2,400 of orders on your own ordering page, paying a 2.9% card fee ($69.60) instead of commission.
Moving those orders to your own page would keep $530 more a month, $6,365 a year.
Compare with US restaurants
US full-service median income before taxes, 2024: 2.8% of sales (food and drink 32%, labor 36.5%). From the National Restaurant Association's survey of more than 900 US restaurants. Medians, not targets.
Move app regulars to your own ordering page
Make a Menuthere ordering page with your menu and a QR code. Orders on it pay 0% commission, so regulars who order direct leave you more.
Sales, food and labor as a share of sales, rent and other costs. Example numbers are filled in to start.
The share of sales that comes through the apps and their average commission. The calculator takes it off your margin.
See your margin with the apps and with the same orders coming direct, then copy the numbers for your partner or accountant.
Use pour cost as your drink cost line
In a bar the cost line is mostly what is in the bottle and the keg. Add up what you paid for liquor, beer, wine and mixers used this month, plus bar food, and enter it as a share of sales. Take inventory at the start and end of the month, not just your invoices.
Don't count on price rises to cover costs
Bar drink prices barely moved: the consumer price index for alcoholic drinks bought away from home rose about 0.2% in the year to September 2026, while food away from home rose about 3.5%. If your suppliers raised prices more than that, the gap comes out of your margin unless you re-price.
Put bartender pay in labor, tips out of sales
Federal law lets you pay a tipped bartender a cash wage as low as $2.13 an hour only if tips bring them to at least the minimum wage, and many states set a higher floor. Enter what you actually pay in wages and payroll taxes, and leave customers' tips out of your sales figure.
Questions owners ask
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Put your items on a Menuthere page. Customers pick, fill in their details and the order arrives on your WhatsApp. Free, with no commission.