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On cocktail menus across the country, it’s no longer rare to see a drink with premium spirits inching closer and closer to $30. Even at some neighborhood joints, $20 classics have become the norm. But when The Radicle, from the team behind Daisies, debuted in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood last year, the cocktail menu had a jaw-dropping price tag: Just $10 for most of the drinks, with a few additions that go for $12. At a time when margins are tighter than ever and restaurants are struggling to keep the lights on, Nicole Yarovinsky, the bar’s beverage director, explained how they keep prices so low and still turn a profit.
Liz Provencher: Was keeping drink prices low baked into the concept when your team decided to open Radicle?
Nicole Yarovinsky: Yes. I remember during service at Daisies, our sister restaurant, chef and owner Joe Frillman pulled me into the office and he pulled out a menu for a new concept with a price tag of $10 written on a tiny little beverage section in the very corner. He goes, “Oh, don’t even look at the price, but if you could get it that low, that would be awesome.”
So I sat down with costing spreadsheets that I’ve been using for years, and I first looked at all of the cocktails that we had within the last year at Daisies. I said I can get most of this down to $10 within a comfortable cost range. We just have to understand the pour cost (which is the percentage of a drink’s revenue that is spent on its ingredients). Our target pour cost of 18 percent needs to be raised a little bit to 22 percent, which is still perfectly acceptable in the industry. It’s such a small change that could affect the scale of drinks being ordered significantly.
Why was making the bar affordable important to you and the team?
When Joe [Frillman] came to me with that menu, he said, “I went out the other night, and I ended up spending $600 on a two-person meal. Most of it was wine, and I left hungry.” We’ve all had that experience.
We keep talking as an industry about people drinking less, especially younger people. But they can’t afford it. If you’re charging $20 for a single beverage and you’re upset that a 21-year-old is instead going next door to have a seltzer in a can, that’s on you because you’ve completely priced them out.
Let’s break it down. What do the margins for each drink on the menu actually look like?
I can give you a really great example. It’s called the Rule of Three, a stirred Scotch cocktail. We use Monkey Shoulder, which is a fairly well-respected bottle. A 750 milliliter bottle costs me $23.50. Then we use Cocchi Americano, which, again, is a recognized brand for aromatized wine and goes for $18.17 per bottle. Diplomático Reserva, which is $34 for a liter bottle, and amontillado sherry, which is $17.93 a bottle, round out the major spirit ingredients. Then we use Peychaud’s bitters, which cost me $6.32, and a homemade fig leaf cordial.
The cordial uses fig leaves that we got over the summer from a local Illinois farmer. We processed, pre-measured, and froze the amount to make enough for a batch of cordial. Now we pull these prepackaged kits out of the freezer to make what is essentially a fig leaf tea. A liter of that cordial costs me $6 and we only use a very small amount per drink.
So for this 3-ounce cocktail, all of those ingredients together is less than $2. It comes down to $1.91 for me to make that drink. Since it’s served up, I don’t have to account for the ice that I’m purchasing. I don’t really account for glassware in this space because with the amount of uses I get out of the glass, it’s just silly to take into account per drink, but most people leave a little bit of wiggle room in their pour cost to account for these extra expenses. If I price this cocktail at $10, my pour cost percentage is 19 percent so I’m still under 22 percent, which is our goal at Radicle.
Do you “offset” the cost of some drinks with others?
Yes, of course. Anyone who really sits down with their menu when they’re building it out and looks at these things will definitely have a little bit of offset.
Daisies is known for its commitment to sustainability, and that’s a goal at Radicle as well. How does that play into your ability to keep costs down?
We learned a long time ago at Daisies we have to do things in-house to offset the cost of local and organic ingredients. We also try to maximize each ingredient’s flavor by using fermentation, preservation, and other strategies, and that alone has allowed us to make sure the drinks we’re creating are consistent and cost-efficient.
Sustainability has been made into something that’s considered luxury—even though all it is at its core is resourcefulness. We realized that by utilizing these more sustainability-oriented thought processes, we didn’t have to really charge more than $15 for a drink while still using [quality] spirits. It is legitimately cheaper to do these things right. Not just the produce that you bring in and the suppliers that you work with, but how you think about these items, how you think about your staff, and the relationships that you build.
With lower cocktail prices, check averages must be lower. How did staff react to that? And what do you do to supplement that and ensure they still earn a good living?
That’s not something we were blind to, and we made decisions with that in mind when building the concept.
The hourly that we offer is on the higher end of the city, from my understanding. We also have a 20 percent service charge on every single bill. A portion goes toward health and benefits for the staff and the rest is split out between staff in a pool. We have been very transparent with every single staff member that we interview about the menu pricing, and always tell them the service charge is a baseline guarantee.
Having a pooled house also helps. This is a smaller space, so it requires fewer individuals in the pool. The team is tighter and more incentivized to help each other out. Ultimately, this is a community effort. It’s a machine, and a few hands go a long way.
What has been the biggest surprise since introducing this lower price menu?
A lot of guests come in unaware that affordability is one of the goals we have, so they’re surprised. Our team will ask if they’d like another, and [decline] because they’re used to a cocktail being a particular price point in the city, and they’ve been burned enough times by the final bill that comes.
Bringing the price tag down to a more approachable point actually allows us to do more out-there things. Making sure that [drinks are] not priced at a ridiculous number [means] it doesn’t feel like a risk, so more guests are willing to go for it and order something outside their comfort zone.
We also see a little bit more engagement from the guests. I think with the lower price point, suddenly it becomes more of an open conversation. If you’re putting dual-fermented grapefruit in a drink and the guest has no clue what “dual-fermented” means, they may feel silly asking because they don’t want to be ridiculed for not knowing. But it’s $10, so they’re going to go ahead and order it anyway. Then when it’s delicious, they may feel more comfortable with the person who’s serving them. It feels like they’re not being snobby, they’re excited to talk about it. Maybe they even ask a couple more questions and the team can point them in the direction of new horizons that the guests haven’t even thought about before.
How can other bars adopt this same approach?
It’s silly that people look at these things and think that they are unattainable. I would love to see a lot less of that.
A lot of drinks cost $2 to make. Now, how does that $2 suddenly become 20 by the time that it reaches you at the bar? It’s crazy, and I think there’s a very big conversation around transparency that needs to happen in this industry. I’m happy to share our margins and how we make it work because I would love for this to be something that is the norm as opposed to a thing to be put on pedestal.
