How to build the hotel cocktail list with standardized recipes and cost per glass

In a hotel bar the margarita is never made by the same person. The afternoon bartender pours it, the pool server improvises it when the bartender is on break, and the room service cook builds it at eleven at night. If the recipe lives in one of their heads, you have three different margaritas with the same price on the guest folio. This guide is about having only one.

Why a hotel cocktail list is built differently

A street bar has one counter, one bartender and one register. A hotel bar has several revenue centers serving the same list: the lobby bar, the pool bar, the restaurant that also sells cocktails at dinner, and the room service that carries them up to the room. The same drink leaves different hands, in different glassware, and sometimes with ice that melted on the way.

On top of that, most glasses in a hotel are not paid in cash. They are charged to the room and show up on the guest folio days later, at check-out. If the pour varies, the guest does not complain at the bar; the guest complains at the front desk, to a receptionist who never saw the glass. That is why a standardized recipe in a hotel is not only a cost issue. It is a matter of trust in the folio.

And there is a third reason: the controller. Under the hospitality accounting standard, beverages from the bar, the restaurant and room service are reported as revenue of different centers with their own costs. If you do not know what each glass costs, you cannot say what each revenue center costs, and the food and beverage report becomes an estimate.

Step 1: write the recipe as a card, not as a note

A standardized recipe is a card with fixed fields. It is not a photo of the whiteboard or a message in the bar group chat. Every cocktail on the list needs the same card, with the same fields, in the same order, so that anyone in the hotel makes it the same way at four in the afternoon and at one in the morning.

• Commercial name and internal name, because the menu will say “Sunset on the terrace” and the ticket will say “sunset”.
• Ingredients with quantities in milliliters or grams, never “a splash” or “to taste”.
• Technique: shaken, stirred, built or blended, with an approximate preparation time.
• Exact glassware and amount of ice, because the glass defines the visible pour for the guest.
• Garnish and its cost, however small: one orange slice on forty glasses a day is a whole orange per shift.
• Revenue center where it is served and allowed variations: no glass at the pool, polycarbonate instead.

The card is written once and reviewed when an ingredient changes. If the tequila supplier switched the 750 milliliter bottle for a 700, the card does not change but the cost does, and that recalculation belongs to the system, not to the bartender.

Step 2: define the pour and accept that there is waste

The pour is the amount of spirit per glass. Most hotel bars work between 45 and 60 milliliters of main spirit per cocktail, and the decision is yours. What matters is not the figure but that it is the same in every revenue center. A bartender pouring with a jigger and another pouring by eye can differ by a third on every glass without noticing.

Waste exists and it has to go into the cost. There is waste from the pour spout dripping, from the bottom of the bottle that never comes out, from the glass that broke with the cocktail inside, and from the comp the manager approved for a guest who waited too long. A practical way is to add a fixed waste percentage to the ingredient cost of every glass and review it monthly against the physical bar inventory.

How many glasses come out of a bottle

With a 45 milliliter pour, a 750 milliliter bottle yields 16 full glasses and leaves 30 milliliters that go to waste or to a short last glass. That figure serves two purposes: deducting inventory per glass sold rather than per bottle opened, and spotting when a bottle produced 12 charged glasses instead of 16.

Step 3: calculate the cost per glass with an example

The figures below are invented to show the calculation. They are not market prices and they are not from any property. Use them only to follow the method, then replace them with your own.

Take a classic margarita: 45 milliliters of tequila, 20 of orange liqueur, 25 of lime juice, salt and ice. Suppose the 750 milliliter tequila bottle costs you 450, so each milliliter costs 0.60 and the 45 milliliters cost 27. The 700 milliliter orange liqueur costs 280, that is 0.40 per milliliter, and the 20 milliliters cost 8. A kilo of limes costs 40 and yields 500 milliliters of juice, so each milliliter costs 0.08 and the 25 milliliters cost 2. Salt and ice, 1. Total ingredients: 38. With 5 % waste the cost per glass is 40.

Look at the gin and tonic: it costs more than the margarita and leaves more margin in money, but its cost over price is higher. A controller looks at the percentage; an owner looks at the money. Both are right, and the list is built by balancing the two readings: low-percentage cocktails that hold the average and high-margin cocktails that hold the sales.

Step 4: set the price with the margin in view, before printing

The most common mistake is pricing by looking at the menu of the hotel across the street. Price is set from cost, with a cost-over-price target you decide for the bar, and adjusted afterwards with commercial judgment. If your target is a 25 % cost for the hotel bar cocktail list, the net price of a glass that costs 40 is 40 divided by 0.25, that is 160. You add your country’s tax to that net figure to get the printed price.

What matters is that the margin is visible before the list is printed, not after. When the recipe lives in the system with its cost, typing the sale price shows the cost over price of each cocktail on screen, and the weighted average of the whole list. If a cocktail comes out at 45 % and you want to keep it for image, you keep it knowing what compensates for it. What you cannot do is print a hundred menus and find out at the month-end meeting.

Prices per revenue center

In a hotel it is normal for the same glass to have one price at the bar and another in room service, because delivery to the room has a cost. The recipe is one; the price can vary by revenue center. What must not vary is the pour. If the guest orders the margarita at the pool and later in the room, it has to be the same drink with a clear service charge on the folio, not a shorter glass.

Step 5: the recipe inside the system deducts per glass, not per bottle

This is where the card stops being a document and becomes control. When the recipe is loaded in the point of sale with its ingredients and quantities, every margarita on a ticket deducts 45 milliliters of tequila, 20 of liqueur and 25 of juice from the bar inventory. At month end, the theoretical inventory says how much tequila should be left and the physical count says how much is left. The difference is your real waste, and you compare it against the percentage on the card.

This changes the conversation with the bartender. It is no longer “the tequila ran out too fast”; it is “this bottle produced 11 charged glasses and should have produced 16”. And it changes the conversation with the controller, because the bar’s beverage cost is calculated from recipes and not from an estimate over the month’s purchases.

If you have a pool bar, deduction per glass is even more useful, because there the consumption is charged to the guest folio from the lounger and nobody is watching the counter. How that verified charge works is explained on the room charge page (Room charge).

One list, three revenue centers and a single folio

When the cocktail list is one for the whole hotel, the guest who ordered a mojito at the pool at five, another at the bar at eight and another in the room at eleven sees three identical lines on the folio, with the revenue center and time of each. If there is a complaint, the front desk can say who served each glass and when. If there is none, the controller sees that the same guest consumed in three centers, and that data feeds the hotel’s revenue per occupied room.

It also simplifies purchasing. With recipes loaded and sales by revenue center, the system tells you how many milliliters of each spirit were sold in the week and how much is left at each bar. The purchase order comes from there, not from a walk through the storeroom with a notebook. You can see which reports are built on that base on the reports page (Reports).

Common mistakes when building the list

• Costing with the last purchase price and forgetting to update it when the supplier raises it.
• Setting the pour on the card but not buying jiggers for every revenue center.
• Putting the garnish at zero cost because “it is just a slice”.
• Charging the same price in room service as at the bar and absorbing the delivery cost without seeing it.
• Printing the list before looking at the weighted average cost over price.
• Letting every revenue center keep its own version of the recipe.

What to do this week

1. Pick the ten best-selling cocktails at your hotel bar and write their card with the fields in this guide.
2. Measure each one once with the shift bartender and with the pool server, and compare the real pour against the card.
3. Calculate the cost per glass of those ten with your current purchase prices and write down the cost over price of each.
4. Review the room service price of each cocktail and decide whether the service charge sits in the price or on a separate folio line.
5. Load the ten recipes into your point of sale with ingredients and per-glass deduction, and compare theoretical inventory against the physical count at the end of the week.

Inn Restaurant stores every recipe with its ingredients, deducts inventory per glass sold at any revenue center of the hotel and shows cost over price the moment you set the menu price, with every glass charged to the guest folio. If you want to see it with your own list, the 15-minute demo is booked on the contact page (contact).