Garnish Costs

Bartenders routinely leave garnish out of the recipe because "it's just a peel." Do the math. The number is bigger than it looks.

A worked example

A $0.30 garnish per cocktail, in a bar doing 50 cocktails a night, six nights a week:

• 50 cocktails per night times $0.30 equals $15 per night.
• $15 times 6 nights times 52 weeks equals roughly $4,700 a year.
• Add citrus, herbs, bitters drops, salt rims, and it's easily $10,000 to $20,000 a year unaccounted.

Adding garnish to a recipe

Treat each garnish as an ingredient in your inventory. A lemon costs you, say, $0.50, and yields six peels, so each peel is about $0.08. A bottle of Angostura at $18 yields roughly 200 dashes, so a dash is about $0.09. Add them to the cocktail with their actual pour size. The hero number now reflects the real drink.