The LiquidMargins service catalogue
From beverage costing and menu engineering to inventory analysis, recipe standardisation, and operational systems, LiquidMargins helps hospitality teams make better decisions about what they pour, what it costs, and what it earns.
Know what you’re pouring. Know what it costs. Know what it earns.
01 / THE SERVICE CATALOGUE
Five categories of work, plus seasonal and new-drink development. Each service shows what you receive and what we need from you to start.
CATEGORY 01
What each drink costs to make, what it sells for, and what it actually contributes. The starting point for most pricing and menu decisions.
Most menus are priced from memory or old supplier lists. We cost every drink from the ingredient up.
See which drinks earn their place before you change a single price.
Recipes, ingredient prices, product sizes, serving quantities and current selling prices.
Checks whether your current prices support the margin you need, drink by drink.
Price changes backed by numbers you can explain to your team.
Your menu, recipes, ingredient costs and current selling prices.
Scope note We use 18% as an internal reference point, not a universal target. The right figure depends on your concept, pricing and market, and we set it with you.
A drink can be popular and unprofitable, or profitable and invisible. We look at sales and contribution together.
Know which drinks to promote, fix, reprice or retire.
Menu, recipes, prices and item-level sales data for the period you want reviewed.
When a supplier raises prices or a product changes, the impact spreads across every drink that uses it.
See exactly how a price change lands on each drink, and what to do about it.
Supplier pricing, product specifications and the recipes affected.
CATEGORY 02
Where your stock goes between the delivery door and the till. We work from the counts and records your team provides.
Compares what your recipes and sales say you should have used against what actually left the shelf.
Narrow down where stock is going, so you know what to check first.
Opening and closing inventory, purchases, sales data and recipes, plus recorded waste and complimentary drinks where available.
Scope note We analyse the inventory information you provide; your team carries out the physical counts. A variance shows where to look. On its own it doesn’t explain why, so it is a starting point for your checks, not a conclusion about any person.
Spills, over-prep and expired product add up quietly. We put a cost on them.
Turn waste records into a short, prioritised list of fixes.
Waste records, ingredient costs and preparation quantities.
Ordering on instinct leads to cash tied up on shelves in one area and run-outs in another.
Order against agreed levels instead of guesswork.
Current inventory, historical usage, bottle sizes and supplier delivery schedules.
CATEGORY 03
The written standards behind a consistent bar: how each drink is built, what each prep costs, and how recurring jobs get done.
Recipes that live in someone’s head change with every shift. We turn them into fixed specifications.
The same drink, built the same way, whoever is on the well.
Your current recipes or build notes, and any house standards you already follow.
House-made ingredients are often the least-costed part of a menu.
Put a real cost on everything made in-house.
Examples Syrups, cordials, infusions, juices, garnishes and batches.
Batch recipes, ingredient costs and the yields you measure.
Recurring tasks done differently by every person, every shift.
Procedures written down once, so they don’t depend on one person.
Examples Opening and closing, bar station setup, preparation standards, stock handling, waste recording and inventory-count procedures.
How the task is done today, your station layout and who is responsible for each step.
CATEGORY 04
Reference material your team can use during service and during onboarding. Built from your standardised recipes.
Paper specs get lost, and PDFs get buried in group chats.
Specs on the phone in their pocket, mid-shift.
Standardised recipes. If yours aren’t standardised yet, that is usually the task to queue first.
New hires learn from whoever happens to be on shift.
One structured reference for everything a new hire needs to learn the bar.
Recipes, house standards and any existing training material.
“Ready for the station” means something different to every manager.
A clear, written standard for when someone is ready.
Your recipes, station standards and the roles to be assessed.
Scope note LiquidMargins creates the documentation and training materials. Your venue remains responsible for staff management, supervision and delivering the training.
CATEGORY 05
Clean, consistent product data so sales reports and stock deductions reflect how drinks are actually built. Relevant systems may include Toast, Oracle MICROS Simphony and Aloha, depending on the data and format you supply.
If POS items aren’t linked to recipes correctly, your stock deductions and cost reports are wrong from the start.
Sales and stock deductions that match how drinks are really built.
Your POS item export, recipes and current product or SKU list.
Duplicate products, inconsistent names and broken links make reports unreliable.
Product data your reports can trust.
Product and SKU exports from your POS or inventory system.
Scope note We prepare the mapping specifications and structured data. Your authorised POS administrator makes any changes in your live system. We never need, or ask for, access to it.
Seasonal menus & new beverage development
Creative work, held to the same standard as the rest of the catalogue: every drink is specified, costed and ready for service.
We review a proposed menu for cost, pricing, preparation consistency and operational suitability before it goes to print.
We develop new beverage concepts or refine existing ones within an explicitly agreed scope.
Scoped separately. A full menu build is a project, not a single task. We agree the scope first and deliver it in defined stages through your queue, for example a few drinks at a time.
02 / HOW IT WORKS
Everything runs asynchronously through your client workspace. No meetings to schedule, and no proposals to approve.
Choose a job from the catalogue and add the information it needs through your client workspace.
We check that the inputs are complete. Anything missing is requested before production begins.
The request joins your backlog. Only one task per subscription is in production at a time.
Our standard target is 48 hours from validation, excluding weekends. It is a target, not a guarantee; larger or exceptional requests get an agreed scope and timeline.
Once a task is complete, the next eligible request moves into production.
03 / TASK SCOPE
Clear task definitions are what keep the turnaround fast and the work precise. Here is how we draw the lines.
One task
“Cost these 12 cocktails and provide their beverage cost percentages.”
One outcome, one set of inputs, one deliverable.
Several tasks
“Cost 12 cocktails, redesign the menu, rewrite the descriptions, create recipe cards, and map every drink to our POS.”
Five different outcomes. We’d queue it like this, in order, so each step builds on the last:
04 / SUBSCRIPTION PLANS
The right plan depends on your operating structure: one bar line, or several bars and outlets that need to work from the same standards.
Plan 01
$499/ month
For an independent bar, restaurant or single-concept venue operating one central bar line.
One active task at a time.
Suitable for
Plan 02
$1,499/ month
For boutique hotels, resorts and hospitality businesses coordinating beverage operations across multiple bars or outlets.
One active task at a time, with scope appropriate to the subscription.
Suitable for
Both plans work through the same queue, one task at a time. The hotel plan covers work that spans several outlets within each task; it does not run tasks in parallel. Not sure which fits? Email operations@liquidmargins.bar.
05 / WHAT WE DON’T DO
LiquidMargins is a remote desk for beverage analysis, documentation and recommendations. Staying out of these areas is what lets us do that work well.
Choose the job you need, provide the relevant information, and let LiquidMargins turn your beverage data into practical next steps.
