Bar / pub / Inventory and food cost
Inventory and pour cost for a bar
Scored and compared prices dated
The short answer
A bar's inventory problem is specific: pour cost accuracy and bottle-level shrinkage, since overpouring and comped drinks are where margin actually leaks, not spoilage the way it does in a kitchen. Lightspeed and Toast both track usage against sales well enough to catch this at a single site; neither is a dedicated liquor-control system, which is worth knowing going in.
Reviewed by the editorial team · updated 11 August 2026
Step 3
What matters most to you?
Pick one or two. Everything below re-scores instantly, and we show you the maths.
Winner overall
Toast
The one built for restaurants only, with the lock-in that implies.
The trade-off
You are locked to Toast payment processing. There is no bringing your own processor.
Why it won
- price
- ease of setup
- support
- volume
- integrations
Our scores, 1 to 5, defined on the methodology page.
Everything else, ranked the same way
| # | Product | From | Contract | Card rate | Score | Price checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Toast The one built for restaurants only, with the lock-in that implies. | Free, then $69 | multi-year is typical | 2.99% + 15¢ on the free Starter Kit, 2.49% + 15¢ on the $69 plan | 3.6 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
| 02 | Lightspeed Restaurant Strong reporting and stock control, priced for somewhere above the small independent. | From $69 | month to month available | 2.6% + 10¢ on Starter, negotiable on higher tiers | 3.2 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
| 03 | Restaurant365 Restaurant-specific back-office software built for people running five or more sites, priced accordingly. | On request | multi-year is typical | not applicable | 3.2 | Pricing checked 11 Aug 2026 |
What's different about buying this for bar / pubs
Kitchen food cost problems are mostly about spoilage and portioning. A bar's version is different: a bartender who pours a slightly heavy drink all night, or comps a round for a regular without logging it, is invisible on a receipt but shows up clearly once you compare bottles used against drinks sold over a week.
Lightspeed Restaurant and Toast's inventory modules both track usage against sales at the bottle level well enough to surface that gap for a single site, at $189/month and as a Toast add-on respectively. Neither is purpose-built liquor-control software with per-pour sensors or spout tracking, which exists as a separate hardware category entirely; what they offer is variance reporting you check periodically rather than real-time pour monitoring.
For most independent bars that variance report, checked weekly against what should have been poured, is enough to catch a real problem without adding a dedicated liquor-control system on top.
Questions people actually ask
- Do I need pour-spout hardware as well as software?
- Not necessarily. Dedicated pour-control hardware exists and catches overpouring in real time, but for many independent bars, periodic variance reporting from the POS-linked inventory tools here is enough to spot a pattern.
- How do comped drinks get tracked properly?
- They need to be logged through the POS as a comp rather than just not rung in at all; the latter is exactly what makes shrinkage invisible until a stock count catches it later.