Another Round of Drinks
I'm typically not one to repost things that show up in other blogs. We want to keep this original, ya know... But the following little item from Cockeyed (reposted by Brightest Young Things) caught my eye and had to be shared with my readers. It's the Cocktail Calculator and it lets you calculate just how much that drink you just spent $15 on really costs.I mean, the very nature of this blog just begs for something like this. We all go out to these bars and clubs and pay an arm and a leg for what we drink. Haven't you wondered just how much it actually costs the bar to produce that drink?
I plugged in my drink of choice, which is a Crown Royal Whiskey and Coke. I'm usually charged $8 to $10 for this drink at most DC drinking establishments. The true cost to make it? $1.34. Yep, the bars and clubs that serve this drink are making close to $8 profit on my drink.
I sent a quick note to my friend Daniel B. who works at Luka's Taproom in downtown Oakland and asked him what he typically finds is the best drink bargain based on true cost to the bar. His answer was "wine, for sure!" So there you have it. Drink up my friends!
Photo by Flickr user Jake Holt
Labels: Bars, Drinking, Nightlife
posted by DVS @ 2:31 PM
5 Comments:
Dude, good call. I normally don't like reposting stuff either, but this was actually pretty useful. Now I'm all angry that I spend so much money though, haha!
You have to factor in for all costs involved if you are considering the value of that drink. This includes wages paid to the staff. The cost of renting, decorating, heating/cooling, and maintaining the location. The cost of entertainment talent (e.g. DJ).
As a person who used to be a paid gigging musician, you start to wonder how a place that doesn't charge a cover can afford to pay you. The answer: you're being paid for via alcohol sales net revenue (beyond that cost of materials and labor).
a former sommelier's two cents, not me but a friend:
he's only half-right, usually a glass of wine at a bar is still costing you 2-3 times what it would cost you on your own. So, if you buy a $9 glass of wine, you could have "bought" that at hoe with a $3-5 dollar purchase... although, you would of course have to buy a full bottle, so that does complicate things. I still think that Beer is your best value at most bars, usually no more than 2X mark-up, and cheaper, so you're only paying a small cost for taking that beer out of your house, in essence
Franco's right. If you determined the actual cost to manufacture the liquid in the bottle, the cost of the raw ingredients, it's pretty small...figure the cost of the bottle (that's thrown away), the label printing, the cap, the taxes (oh yeah, THE TAXES!)...the transportation, the producer's markup and all their expenses, the distributor's markup, then, if served in a fancy shmancy pub - the "ambiance" - all that overhead Franco mentions leading up to the retail markup and hopefully a profit (GASP! A profit!), that little bit of nasty flavored alcohol and its attendent haze is really cheap stuff. So I agree it's often tough to justify the apparent robbery for a few ounces of fire water and even tougher to swallow that little bit of $10 booze, or even a $4 beer. But we do it because we like it. Hell, some people spend hundreds of thousands of bucks on a motor home then try to convince themselves they're having fun. So knock back that high priced hootch. And think of how you've stimulated the economy (not to mention whatever else you stimulated). And had a good time doing it. As an old friend once said, "Suck up, you're behind."
Drinks?
You mean there are DRINKS in that picture?
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