Answers, in plain English.

PourCost is becoming the cocktail costing co-pilot for bartenders and bar managers. The vision: enter what you buy, what you pour, and what you sell it for, and PourCost does the math, flags the drinks that bleed money, and keeps everything in sync across your devices. We're shipping the foundation now and adding the rest as fast as we can.

Solo bartenders dialing in their own menu, GMs running a cocktail program, and operators with a few locations who are tired of spreadsheet roulette every time a price goes up.

Same brand, new app. The original PourCost has been a simple, reliable pour-cost calculator for years and is still live. PourCost v2 is a ground-up rebuild with a full menu builder, invoice scanning, AI-powered insights, and a modern interface.

Founder Joshua Duncan spent 12 years behind the bar. Every Monday started with a cost sheet that was already out of date. PourCost is the tool he wished he'd had as a GM, built from the ground up with the realities of bar ops in mind.

Yes. The core pour-cost calculator and basic recipe building are free with no credit card. Advanced features (invoice OCR, AI menu analysis, multi-location) will move into paid tiers when those launch, but the calculator stays free forever.

Waitlist members lock in launch pricing, our lowest rates ever. Sign up at /waitlist before paid tiers go live and the rate sticks for the lifetime of your account.

No. Features available on the free tier today stay on the free tier. New paid features (OCR scaling, AI insights, integrations) will be additions, not takeaways.

PourCost launches on iOS first, with Android following shortly after and a full web app rolling out later. Sign in once and your data syncs across whichever devices you use.

The mobile apps work on tablets. A tablet-optimized interface is on the post-launch roadmap.

No. It's a standard browser app. Open it on any modern browser, sign in, and start working.

Yes for editing existing data and capturing invoice photos. Catalog search and recipe library adoption need a connection. Changes you make offline queue locally and sync when you reconnect.

Five to ten minutes from sign-up to your first fully costed cocktail. The catalog autofills most spirits, beer, and wine, so you're picking from a list rather than typing brand sheets.

CSV import is on the post-launch roadmap. For now, the catalog covers most distributed products and matching by brand+size is fast. Custom ingredients (house syrups, infusions) get added by hand.

Yes. We're launching with 30 hand-picked classic and modern recipes, each with its original spec. Adoption maps a recipe to the bottles in your inventory so it costs out against what you actually carry. Bartender-shared recipes are on the roadmap.

Stock 5 to 10 well spirits using the catalog, set your default pour sizes, then build one cocktail. The Getting Started article in the help center walks through it.

Snap a photo of a distributor invoice. PourCost reads the line items, matches them to your inventory, and gets you to a review screen. One tap pushes the new costs to every recipe that uses an updated ingredient.

High on clear, well-lit photos. The review step catches anything the AI gets wrong, and you can edit any field before pushing changes. Bad lighting is the most common cause of mis-reads, so reshooting in better light usually fixes it.

Multi-location support is on the enterprise roadmap. v2 launches as a single-bar app. If you're an operator with several venues, get in touch and we'll loop you in early.

POS integration (Toast, Square, Lightspeed) is on the roadmap, not in v2. When it ships, you'll get real variance reports based on actual sales, not just theoretical pour cost.

Single-user accounts at launch. Team accounts with role-based access are on the roadmap.

AI-generated study guides and quizzes from your own menu are on the roadmap. The help center already has a pour-cost concepts section that bartenders can read directly.

CSV export per category (ingredients, cocktails, invoices) is on the post-launch roadmap. Your data is yours; we'll always provide a way to take it with you.

Not yet. Theoretical pour cost is calculated today. Counts, par-levels, and variance reports against your POS are on the roadmap.

No. Your recipes and pricing data are yours. We process them only to provide the service, and we don't share them with third parties for marketing or training.

Securely, in encrypted cloud storage. Your recipes, costs, and account data are protected at rest and in transit. The privacy policy lists the specific subprocessors we use.

No. AI features (invoice reading, menu analysis) run through enterprise-grade providers whose API terms prohibit training on your data. The privacy policy lists current providers and is updated when we change them.

Your data is permanently removed. Export anything you want to keep first.

Those are POS systems with reporting layered on top. PourCost is a costing and menu-engineering tool. We don't ring sales; they don't help you build a profitable cocktail. Eventually we'll connect (POS integrations are on the roadmap), but the jobs are different.

Those tools are inventory-counting heavy. PourCost is recipe and margin heavy. If your problem is variance and counting, those tools are deeper. If your problem is 'I don't know what to charge for this cocktail,' PourCost is faster and cheaper.

You can. Most bars do. The math works in either tool. The difference is that a spreadsheet doesn't update every recipe when a vodka price changes, doesn't read invoices, and doesn't sync to your phone in the well. PourCost is a spreadsheet that knows it's a bar.

Join the waitlist at /waitlist for early access. Once we're live, you'll create a free account with email or social sign-in.

Tap 'Forgot password' on the sign-in screen and we'll email a reset link. The Login Issues help article covers edge cases (reset email not arriving, stuck sessions).

Email support at the address on the contact page. Founder reads every message during early access.

Yes. Free accounts are free; paid tiers, when they launch, will be cancellable any time with no contract.