Beer Profit Calculator
A pint can look profitable and still lose money. The gap between the two usually hides in three places: the difference between margin and markup, the beer that never reaches a glass because of foam and line loss, and the fixed costs that turn a healthy gross profit into a thin net one. This beer profit calculator handles all three. The per-serving mode works out profit per pint or bottle with a wastage adjustment and an optional keg-cost helper, then nets off your fixed costs. The whole-business mode solves the month-end equation: enter any two of revenue, costs, and profit, and it finds the third.
The per-serving mode is pre-filled with a typical draft setup: a $180 keg pouring 105 pints at $6 each, with 5 percent lost to foam and lines and $200 of fixed costs for the period. Press Calculate profit and the keg returns $4.29 of profit per pint at a 71.43 percent margin. The sections below show where every one of those numbers comes from.
Keg helper: enter the keg cost and servings per keg to set the cost per serving.
Gross profit uses the unrounded profit per serving, so it can differ by a cent from sellable servings times the rounded figure shown.
Quick Answer
Key takeaways
- Margin and markup are the same profit measured from opposite ends. The example pint has a 71.43% margin and a 250% markup, and pricing with the wrong one is the classic bar mistake.
- Wastage is a profit line, not a footnote. On the example keg, moving from 0% to 10% wastage costs $45 of gross profit.
- Gross profit grades the beer. Net profit grades the business. Fixed costs belong in their own field so you can see both.
- A keg never pours its theoretical count. A 50-liter keg holds about 105 pints on paper and fewer at the tap.
- Quick Answer
- Margin and markup: the same profit, two different fractions
- Worked example: one keg, fully accounted
- What the menu price does to the same keg
- Wastage: the keg you paid for but never sold
- Gross grades the beer, net grades the business
- What competing calculators miss
- Frequently asked questions
- Add This Calculator to Your Website
- References
Margin and markup: the same profit, two different fractions
Margin divides profit by the selling price; markup divides profit by the cost. Because the price is always the bigger number, margin is always the smaller percentage, and the two drift further apart as profit grows.
Margin % = profit / selling price x 100 (the share of each dollar of sales that is profit).
Markup % = profit / cost x 100 (how much you added on top of cost).
Sellable servings = servings sold x (1 - wastage %).
Gross profit = sellable servings x profit per serving.
Net profit = gross profit - fixed costs for the period.
The practical trap: a manager who wants a 50 percent margin and applies a 50 percent markup instead underprices every pour. On a $1.71 cost, a 50 percent markup gives a $2.57 price and a margin of only 33 percent. If percentages make your head spin, the 20 percent margin calculator isolates the margin side of the same relationship and shows the price a target margin requires.
Worked example: one keg, fully accounted
The calculator is pre-filled with this case. The keg helper turns the $180 keg and its 105 servings into a cost per serving of $1.7143 (the helper keeps four decimal places, because rounding to $1.71 here would quietly move the markup from 250.00% to 250.88%).
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| Cost per pint ($180 / 105) | $1.71 (exact: $1.7143) |
| Profit per pint ($6.00 - $1.7143) | $4.29 |
| Margin ($4.2857 / $6.00) | 71.43% |
| Markup ($4.2857 / $1.7143) | 250.00% |
| Sellable pints (105 x 0.95) | 99.75 |
| Gross profit (99.75 x $4.2857) | $427.50 |
| Fixed costs for the period | $200.00 |
| Net profit | $227.50 |
| Margin verdict | Excellent margin (40%+) |
Where does the $1.71 cost per pint come from in the first place? If you brew rather than buy, it is the output of a batch costing: grain, hops, labor, and packaging divided by servings. The beer cost calculator builds that cost from nine itemized lines, and its per-serving figure drops straight into the cost field here. Bars buying kegs can skip that step with the keg helper; brewers selling their own beer should not.
What the menu price does to the same keg
Hold the keg, the cost, and the wastage steady and move only the price. The margin climbs slowly while the gross climbs fast, which is why small price moves matter more on draft than on almost anything else a bar sells.
| Price per pint | Profit per pint | Margin | Gross profit on 99.75 pints |
|---|---|---|---|
| $5.00 | $3.29 | 65.71% | $327.75 |
| $6.00 | $4.29 | 71.43% | $427.50 |
| $7.00 | $5.29 | 75.51% | $527.25 |
Each extra dollar on the pint adds $99.75 of gross across the keg, exactly the sellable count, because the cost side does not move. The catch is volume: a price the room will not pay sells fewer kegs, and the calculator cannot see your customers. Use it to price the keg you have, then watch what actually sells.
Wastage: the keg you paid for but never sold
Wastage is beer that leaves the keg without reaching a paying customer: foam on the pour, line cleaning, over-pours, and the final gallon that pours cloudy. It is the single most underestimated input in draft beer economics.
| Wastage | Sellable pints from 105 | Gross profit at $6 a pint |
|---|---|---|
| 0% | 105 | $450.00 |
| 5% | 99.75 | $427.50 |
| 10% | 94.5 | $405.00 |
| 15% | 89.25 | $382.50 |
Every point of wastage on this keg costs $4.50 of gross profit, and the fix is usually mechanical rather than financial: balanced lines, clean lines, and the pour discipline the Brewers Association Draught Beer Quality Manual exists to teach. Measure your own rate before trusting any table, including this one: count the pints a keg actually sells across a few weeks and compare with its theoretical yield.
Gross grades the beer, net grades the business
The two profit figures answer different questions. Gross profit says whether this beer, at this price, earns its place on the tap list. Net profit says whether the operation around it works. A keg can post a 71 percent margin and still lose money in a quiet week when the $200 of fixed costs meets only half a keg of sales.
The whole-business mode runs the same logic at period level. It is pre-filled with a small operation's month: $12,000 of revenue against $7,000 of costs, which solves to $5,000 of profit at a 41.67 percent margin, graded "High profitability" on the tool's scale. Leave revenue blank instead and enter costs and a profit target, and it tells you the revenue the target requires. If you want the revenue side modelled from covers and spend rather than typed in as a total, the bar revenue calculator builds it from the door.
Per-serving margin verdicts
- 40% and up: Excellent. Typical of well-priced draft beer.
- 20% to 39%: Healthy. Where most packaged and craft sales land.
- Under 20%: Thin. One cost increase from trouble.
- Below 0%: Every serving sold loses money.
Whole-business margin grades
- 50% and up: Excellent profitability.
- 30% to 49%: High profitability.
- 20% to 29%: Good profitability.
- 10% to 19%: Moderate. Under 10%: low, and below zero the business is operating at a loss.
What competing calculators miss
Brave Calculator's beer profit page, the best-known tool for this search, multiplies (price - cost) by pints sold and stops. Its own FAQ concedes it excludes taxes and wages, and there is no margin, no markup, no wastage, and no fixed-cost field anywhere in it: the number it calls profit is gross contribution on a perfect keg that never foams. CalculatorsHub's draft price tool works the other direction and gets its own math tangled: its worked example applies a "30% profit margin" as a simple markup multiplier, and the formula it prints produces $1.64 a pint, not the $6.50 headline it claims. DojoBusiness's brewpub guides quote sensible keg prices and 300 to 400 percent markup ranges, but they are articles, not tools you can run your own keg through.
This page does the full job in one place: keg helper for the cost, margin and markup side by side so the classic confusion is visible, a wastage input that shrinks the sellable count before any money math, fixed costs kept separate so gross and net both survive, a margin verdict wired to the result, and the whole-business solver for the month-end view. Its honest limit: it prices the beer you tell it about. It cannot count your actual pours, which is why the wastage field asks for a measured number rather than offering a flattering default.
Frequently asked questions
For a brewery selling its own beer, a 20 to 40 percent margin is typical and healthy, and above 40 percent is excellent. Bars pouring draft beer run much higher per-pint margins, commonly 60 to 75 percent, because the pint price carries the rent, staff, and glassware as well as the beer. This calculator grades per-serving margin at 40 percent and above as excellent, 20 to 39 percent as healthy, and under 20 percent as thin.
Margin is profit as a share of the selling price. Markup is profit as a share of the cost. They describe the same dollars from opposite ends. A pint that costs $1.71 and sells for $6 makes $4.29 of profit: that is a 71.43 percent margin and a 250 percent markup. Confusing the two is the most common beer pricing mistake, because a 50 percent markup is only a 33 percent margin.
A US half-barrel (15.5 gallons) holds 1,984 fluid ounces, which is 124 pints of 16 oz in theory. A 50-liter keg holds about 105 pints, which is why the keg helper in this calculator starts at 105 servings. In practice foam, line cleaning, and the last cloudy gallon mean you sell fewer than the theoretical count, and the wastage input exists to model that.
Track one keg at a time for a few weeks. Note the servings the keg should yield, count what you actually sold from it, and divide the shortfall by the theoretical yield. A keg that should pour 105 pints but sells 97 has a wastage rate of about 7.6 percent. Enter your measured figure rather than a guess; at $6 a pint, each point of wastage on the example keg is worth about $4.50 of gross profit.
No. Keep the cost per serving to the beer itself, then enter rent, wages, and utilities for the same period as fixed costs. That separation is what lets the calculator show gross profit (how the beer itself performs) and net profit (how the business performs) as two different numbers. Blend them together and you can no longer tell a pricing problem from a rent problem.
Usually one of three leaks: wastage is higher than the figure you entered, servings are being over-poured so the keg yields less, or beer is leaving without being rung up. The calculator is honest arithmetic on the numbers you give it, so when the till disagrees, measure the actual yield per keg and update the wastage field first. That single input moves the answer more than any other.
Yes. Enter the cost per bottle or can as the cost per serving and the menu or shelf price as the selling price. Wastage for packaged beer is usually near zero unless breakage is a problem, and servings sold is simply units sold. The margin, markup, and fixed-cost math is identical.
It solves the equation revenue minus costs equals profit. Enter any two of total revenue, total costs, and profit for a period, leave the third blank, and the calculator finds it and reports the margin with a profitability grade. It is the same arithmetic a brewery or bar runs at month end, and it pairs with the per-serving mode: per-serving tells you why the month looked the way it did.
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References
- Brewers Association, "Draught Beer Quality Manual" - the trade reference for draught system balance, line cleaning, and pour technique, the main levers on wastage. Brewers Association: Draught Beer Quality Manual. Accessed October 2026.
- Bar-i Blog, "How to Price Draft Beer" - pour-cost pricing method, including why a roughly 20 percent liquor cost is the common draft target and how keg price drives profit per beer. Bar-i: How to Price Draft Beer. Accessed October 2026.
- Dojo Business, "What is the keg pricing for a brewpub?" - wholesale keg price ranges by size and the 300 to 400 percent markup range brewpubs typically apply, with a 20 percent pour-cost goal. Dojo Business: Brewpub Keg Pricing. Accessed October 2026.
- Dojo Business, "What is the profit margin on craft beer?" - margin and markup ranges across the three-tier system: bars at 200 to 300 percent markups on kegs, retailers at 40 to 60 percent on packaged beer. Dojo Business: Craft Beer Profit Margin. Accessed October 2026.
- Elevating Kitchen, "How to Calculate Beer Markup for Maximum Profit" - worked markup and cost-plus pricing examples for kegs and bottles, including spoilage allowances. Elevating Kitchen: Beer Markup Calculation. Accessed October 2026.
- Qamarero, "Bar Pricing Guide: How to Price Beer, Wine, and Cocktails" - draft beer markup benchmarks (3.5 to 4x on keg cost) and usable pint yields after waste. Qamarero: Bar Pricing Guide. Accessed October 2026.