GP calculator for pubs
Dry GP on a dish, wet GP on a keg, and the price you would have to print to hit the GP you want. VAT taken off first, the way your accountant does it.
Nothing to sign up for and no email asked. It runs in your browser, so the numbers you type never leave your phone.
| Menu price net of VAT | £12.08 |
| Gross profit a plate | £9.66 |
| Food cost % | 20.0% |
| If you forget the VAT | 83.3% |
GP is measured on the price net of VAT, because the VAT was never yours. That last line is the flattering number you get if you divide by the printed price instead — it is the single most common mistake on a pub costing sheet.
| Saleable pints a keg | 83.6 |
| Cost a pint | £1.44 |
| Gross profit a pint | £2.90 |
| Gross profit a keg | £242.22 |
A 50 L keg holds 88.0 pints before anything is spilled. Wastage is why your stocktake never agrees with the till, and 5% is a normal, well-run figure.
We work back from the GP you want to the price you would have to print, VAT added on top. 70.0% is the usual food target for a UK independent.
| Net of VAT, which is yours | £8.07 |
| Gross profit a sale | £5.65 |
One dish at a time is fine. A whole menu is forty times this form, and it goes stale the week your supplier moves a price.
Cost my whole menu — $29 →Most bad GP figures are one missing division by 1.2.
Gross profit is what is left of a sale after the stuff you sold. Two rules make it come out right, and one of them gets missed constantly.
Rule one: take the VAT off first
A £14.50 plate at 20% VAT is £12.08 of your money and £2.42 of HMRC’s. GP is measured on the £12.08. Divide by £14.50 instead and a dish that really runs 80.0% GP reads 83.3% — you look three and a bit points healthier than you are, on every line, every month.
This is why the calculator above shows both numbers. If the second one is what your spreadsheet has been telling you, your real GP is the first one.
Rule two: wet GP is a wastage problem
A 50 litre keg is 88.0 pints on paper. Line cleaning, froth and ullage take 5-8% of that before a customer touches it. Nobody prices the pint they poured down the drain, which is exactly why the stocktake never agrees with the till.
At £120 a keg and £5.20 a pint, 5% wastage puts you at 66.9% GP. Push wastage to 10% and the same keg at the same price reads 65.0%. That is nearly £30 a keg, found or lost, without touching the price on the pump clip.
Rule three, unofficially: the mix carries the menu
No individual dish has to hit 70%. Steak never will. Pasta, soup and anything with potato in it will beat it comfortably. What has to hit the target is the weighted mix of what people actually order, which is a different and harder question than costing one plate — and it is unanswerable if you do not know all forty numbers.
Questions people ask
Do you work out GP on the menu price or the price net of VAT?
Net of VAT, always. The VAT on a sale was never your money — you are collecting it for HMRC. If you divide by the printed menu price you will overstate your GP by roughly three percentage points at 20% VAT, and that error is invisible because the number simply looks better.
What is a good wet GP for a pub?
Most UK pubs aim for 55-70% on draught beer, higher on spirits and soft drinks, and lower on premium cask and guest ales. Wet GP is more sensitive to wastage than to price, because every pint lost to line cleaning is a pint you paid for and never sold.
How many pints are in a keg?
A 50 litre keg holds 88.0 pints before any loss, since a UK pint is 0.568 litres. An 11 gallon cask is the same 50 litres. After line cleaning, froth and ullage you should plan on 5-8% less than that.
What GP percentage should food make in a pub?
About 70% is the standard target for food in a UK independent, which is a 30% food cost. No single dish has to hit it — the menu mix does, so a low-GP steak is fine if the pasta and the burger carry it.
Also useful: the dish cost calculator to build a plate cost from pack prices, and a carbonara costed at real wholesale prices.
You can get one dish right tonight. The other thirty-nine are the problem.
Photograph your menu and a few supplier invoices. We draft a recipe for every dish and send your plates back, worst first. You type nothing.
Every dish figure we send is an estimate, shown with the invoice lines and the portions we drafted. If we cannot make a useful report from your invoices, we refund without being asked.