Bar Variance
Also called: liquor variance, beverage variance, pour cost variance
What is Bar Variance?
Bar variance is the difference between theoretical beverage cost — what the drinks you rang up should have consumed, according to your recipes and pour sizes — and actual beverage cost, calculated from opening stock plus purchases minus closing stock. A small gap is normal in any venue. A wide one is money leaving the building, and the value of the measure is that it narrows a vague suspicion to a number you can act on.
What a wide gap usually means
The list is short and worth working through in order, cheapest first. Free-pouring that runs generous. Drinks served and never rung up. Breakage and spillage nobody recorded. Comps and staff drinks outside the system. A house pour that has quietly become a premium brand. And last, stock leaving the premises. Measurement problems are far more common than theft, and they are much cheaper to fix.
Count weekly, not monthly
A monthly count tells you something went wrong in the last thirty days, which is rarely enough to act on. A weekly count tells you which week, and often which shift. For spirits at least, weekly is the interval at which the number becomes useful rather than merely interesting.
Rule out arithmetic first
Before treating a gap as leakage, check that the pours-per-bottle figure in your pricing matches the one in your stock valuation, and that every recipe reflects what is actually served. A bar that prices on twenty-five pours and pours twenty-three will show a permanent variance that no amount of supervision will close, because nothing is going missing.
Frequently asked questions
Around one point between theoretical and actual cost is ordinary in a working bar and not worth chasing. Three or four points is worth investigating, and anything consistently wider than that usually has a specific and findable cause. What matters more than the absolute figure is the trend: a variance that is stable is a known cost, and one that is widening is a live problem.