Jenever

Spirit Guides

We've been working with our spirits for a while, and we have learned a thing or two about them. The guides below are great starting points to working with our spirits, but feel free to reach out to us if you need more!

RUM

PINEAPPLE
RUM

SPICED
RUM

GENEVER

Guide coming soon!

HOUSE
VODKA

Guide coming soon!

STRAIGHT

RYE WHISKEY

Guide coming soon!

Distributors

Ohio
Kentucky

Cost-Plus Pricing

We get it. Craft spirits are more expensive than their mass-produced counterparts. If you're using a margin-based model to price your drinks, using locally-crafted spirits can quickly blow up your prices. But that doesn't have to happen.

Bar owners and managers like margin-based models because they ensure that costs outside of the raw ingredients of a drink (think employee wages, rent, utilities, etc.) are covered. They also mean that a small change in ingredient costs turns into a big change in the price of a drink. An extra dollar in ingredients becomes an extra $6.67 in the cost of a drink under a 15% margin model. 

Let's look at an example using Echo Spirits Rum as an upgrade over your traditional well rum. Let's pretend this is a daiquiri or similar.

In our example, your costs went up by just $0.79 by using craft rum, but your customers are now paying $5.26 more - just by switching the base spirit. Many bars and restaurants stop here and don't think about it any further. Understandably, they don't feel confident their customers will adopt their new pricing. A $10 drink is one thing, but a $16 drink just for a better base spirit is something else entirely. If you've read this far, you know we have another way to look at it.

We prefer cost-plus pricing. On the first cocktail, that $9 margin felt good, right? You were using it before to cover all of your non-ingredient costs and everything was running smoothly. Employees were getting paid, rent checks were clearing, and customers were happy with prices. But you wish you could use higher-quality spirits in your cocktails. You don't need to increase your prices by $5.26 to cover an extra $0.79 in costs. You just need to raise them by... $0.79.

We're huge fans of cost-plus pricing for bars. Figure out what your baseline spirit costs and what the craft equivalent costs and simply add the difference to the price of the cocktail. In almost every case, the difference is less than $1. Your customers will pay an extra dollar for higher-quality cocktails. You'll create better cocktails, make higher tips, have happier customers, and support small, independently-owned businesses.

We're always here to help you break it down if you need us!