Pricing coffee and drinks in a café: how to cost a cup and set your margin
Drink margins are usually higher than food, but they leak through different sizes, extra milk and cups. Costing the cup precisely protects them.
Costing the cup step by step
An illustrative example with hypothetical numbers for a medium cappuccino: 18 g of beans costing 0.20 JOD, 180 ml of milk costing 0.12, cup and lid 0.07, sugar and extras 0.01. Total 0.40 JOD. At a selling price of 2.00 JOD the cost percentage is 20%. Change the price or size and recalculate.
Where margin leaks
Sizes that are not weighed (the barista adds a little extra each time), spilled milk, cups and lids not counted, and drinks given free with no record. The fix: a fixed-weight recipe per size, recording waste, and reviewing bean consumption weekly against cups sold.
In RAWA
In RAWA each drink's recipe is written by weight and per size, so every cup sold deducts beans, milk and the cup from stock and shows cost and margin, and stock counting reveals the difference between expected and actual. The configurable loyalty program suits the café's repeat customer.
Try RAWA free for 7 days with no card: rawaerp.com/register. Questions: [email protected].
Try RAWA in your restaurant
A 100% Arabic-first cloud restaurant system — an offline-capable POS, kitchen display, QR menu, inventory & recipes, and accounting with e-invoicing (JoFotara) on every plan.
Start a free 7-day trial — no cardCommon questions
What is a typical coffee cost percentage?
It varies by beans and location and is often lower than food; calculate your own cup.
Should I price each size separately?
Yes, each size has its own recipe and cost.
How do I spot waste?
By comparing theoretical bean use (from sales) with actual (from stock counts).
Does RAWA suit a café?
Yes — recipes, inventory, loyalty and JoFotara on every plan.