CoversAdvisory
Bar / Cocktail bar

Bars have the best math in the building. Beverage cost is low and the empty hours are obvious.

A cocktail bar's cost of serving a dollar of credit is often 20 points lower than a restaurant's, which makes inKind's 2:1 commitment cheaper to honor. The trade-off is the same: the guests redeeming it need to be new.

Dining credit: core mandate
The verdict

Strong fit for cocktail bars, wine bars and bar-and-grill concepts with a 4.0+ rating and slow early evenings or weeknights. Poor fit for a bar that's at capacity Thursday through Saturday with little else to fill.

Where dining credit works, and where we place something else

Dining credit fits when

  • ✓Pour cost under 25%. Serving $2 of credit costs you far less than it would a restaurant.
  • ✓Weeknights and early evenings are quiet and staff are already on.
  • ✓You're funding a patio, a kitchen, a second bar or a renovation.
  • ✓A food menu with a decent check average, so a redeemed visit isn't two beers.

Look elsewhere when

  • ✕Your volume is almost all Friday and Saturday after 10pm, when you're full anyway.
  • ✕The check average is low. 20% back on a $28 tab barely moves a guest and barely pays you.
  • ✕You need the cash for payroll or a slow season. New debt doesn't fix that.

A worked example for a bar

At 45 cents of cost per dollar of credit and 65% new guests, $100,000 of funding costs a bar meaningfully less than it costs a restaurant with the same reviews.

Change the numbers to yours
Funding received$100,000
Credit to honor$200,000
Food and labor per dollar45%
App diners who are new65%
Cost to serve new guests$58,500
Full-price sales displaced$70,000
Return visits at full price upside−$17,875
Net cost of the capital$10,625
Per year, over 18 months7.1%

Estimate, not a quote. inKind sets its own terms.

The question owners ask

Is a bar even eligible, or is inKind restaurants only?

Bars and cocktail bars are in inKind's network. What inKind cares about is the rating, the check average and whether its members would want to go. A well-reviewed cocktail bar with food usually clears that bar; a dive with $4 drafts usually doesn't.

Also worth modeling

See which instrument we'd place for your bar.

Four questions, two minutes. We pull your Google rating, take a guess at the format, and tell you where you stand.

Covers Advisory is an independent capital advisory, not a lender. We do not make funding decisions, and we are compensated by funding partners when a placement we arrange closes. Our recommendation is the same whether or not a partner pays us. How we're paid.