Hospitality Financial Leadership: Beverage Cost or Contribution Margin?

David Lund | May 7, 2018

By David Lund We all heard about it every month. The beverage cost! And it usually was not very pretty. Seemingly always too high, and it typically created lots of finger pointing and much pontificating. Beverage cost was always a slightly complex beast and often misunderstood. That was largely because this poor cousin to food cost was shrouded in a bit of mystery and mystique, like a secret lost cocktail recipe. Let's have a closer look at the black sheep of the family. Many people are simply confused by beverage cost and, while it is an important standard to maintain, the real game to understand is contribution margin. What makes the ...