Free pour vs. jigger
Free pouring is measuring spirits by count and eye; jiggering uses a measure. Free pouring is faster and consistently over-pours — commonly by 10–20% under service pressure — which lands directly on pour cost.
Worked example · A 15% overpour at volume
- Nominal pour
- 2.0 oz
- Actual average pour
- 2.3 oz
- Spirit cost
- $1.10/oz
- Drinks per week
- 900
- Annual cost of the drift
- $15,444
Roughly two and a half points of pour cost on a bar this size, and it will never appear on an invoice.
The middle options
- Measured pourers — speed close to free pour, consistency close to jiggering.
- Jigger the expensive half. Free pour the well, measure anything above a threshold. Most of the cost is in a minority of the bottles.
- Batch the cocktails. Pre-batching the spirit portion of high-volume cocktails removes the variance entirely and speeds up service.
- Test, then decide. Have each bartender free-pour into a jigger ten times. The spread is usually the argument — nobody believes the number until it's theirs.
Run the numbers
Pour cost calculator
Related terms
Pour cost
Food cost percentage for the bar — beverage cost divided by beverage sales.
Portion control
Keeping served portions equal to specced portions — the difference between the food cost you calculated and the one you get.
Variance
The dollar gap between theoretical and actual food cost — the money that left without a sale.