When Gus’ Sip & Dip opened on New Year’s Eve in Chicago in 2024, it didn't intend to spark a revolution. Instead, the team behind it — the city’s largest restaurant group, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, Inc. — wanted a space offering good-quality cocktails that didn’t break the bank. So it created a 30-drink list featuring classics, each costing an affordable $12.
A $12 cocktail seems surprising at a swanky boite where bartenders don crisp white jackets and the restaurant serves $23 shrimp cocktails and $26 wagyu beef dip sandwiches. But when Gus’ Sip & Dip opened, lines stretched down the street and haven’t subsided much since. In late April, the bar landed at No. 27 on North America’s 50 Best Bars list.
Also Read: India’s newest round of drinkers is rewriting the rules of the world’s biggest bar
The prices of cocktails, from martinis to Manhattans, have soared in the US, as well as in the UK, where a 3.66% increase on taxes on alcohol was added in February. Rising costs are one reason behind shifting drinking behavior, as patrons now pregame at home, have one drink instead of two or three, or skip a cocktail altogether. According to Gallup, the share of American adults who drink alcohol dropped from 67% in 2022 to 54% in 2025. Health concerns, the rise of THC-infused beverages and the sticker shock of a $22 cocktail are all pushing people away from the bar.
These trends have prompted a growing number of operators to rethink their cocktail programs to improve business.
Gus’ beverage director, Kevin Beary, engineered his way to $12 drinks by curating a tight well, or arsenal of bottles, of just 28 labels, buying in bulk and negotiating aggressive pricing. There’s no sprawling back bar — just one quality spirit per category. Considerable time still goes into crafting the program, from making house-made infusions to designing proper glassware.
At the lower price, Beary says there was an immediate behavioral shift, as customers started quickly ordering second and third rounds.
“The price point often encourages you to order a second cocktail. I would rather make less margin and have you order a second cocktail and leave knowing you had a good time and want to return,” Beary says.
Also Read: New cocktails raise the bar: Pubs experiment with exotic ingredients to boost on-trade channel sales
At the recently opened Radicle in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, beverage director Nicole Yarovinsky runs a more aggressive experiment: $10 cocktails. It’s financially viable for Yarovinsky thanks to the sustainability practices at the Radicle’s sister restaurant, the Green Michelin-starred Daisies. Bell pepper trimmings from Daisies’ pasta prep are used in syrups costing roughly $2 per liter. She also adds frozen surplus watermelon juice into cocktail cordials at a cost of 21¢ per ounce; it’s a flavor booster that negates the need for a squeeze of pricey lime juice.
In fact, Yarovinsky has replaced fresh citrus with alternatives such as citric or malic acid, house-made shrubs and vinegars, and verjus made from a local farmer’s imperfect blueberries. These all can cost a fraction of the price of fresh lemons and limes. The math works, if narrowly. Daisies operates at an 18% pour cost; the Radicle runs closer to 22%. In layman’s terms, this means that for every $1 a restaurant guest spends on a drink, it only costs 18¢ for the restaurant to make it, giving it 82% gross profit. So at the Radicle, that $10 cocktail costs $2.20 to make.
"We have regulars already," Yarovinsky says. “People enjoy multiple rounds.” (As a caution against overconsumption, the bar lists the alcohol content alongside each drink.)
At Brooklyn’s Whoopsie Daisy, co-owner Ivy Mix, co-creator of the acclaimed Speed Rack competition, prices classics and highballs at $15. “Bars are a volume game, and we believe if our prices were much higher, our patronage would go down,” Mix explains. “So keeping things more accessible means that we are not ostracizing our neighbors.”
Restaurateur Dusty Grable took a similar approach at his Honolulu restaurants Little Plum and Lady Elaine, adding a $12 classic cocktail category alongside $16 originals last December. The result defied his expectations.
“The average check didn’t drop,” Grable observes. “Instead of one $16 cocktail, they’d order two at $12.”
Bars in pricey London are getting in on the game. At Hawksmoor Martini Bar, from the popular British steak chain, beverage director Liam Davy introduced £12 ($16) house martinis after spending time in Chicago and observing the shift at Gus’.
His move resulted in Hawksmoor’s busiest bar to date. In December the place averaged 1,000 martinis a week — in a city where drinking in beautiful hotel bars can be, in Davy’s words, “horrifically expensive.”
This spring has brought even more value drinks to London. New pizza spot Etna in Newington Green has £5 Negronis on tap. And at the recently opened Burro, in the high-rent neighborhood of Covent Garden, the £7.50 Negroni stars at the top of the menu. “People are very aware of how much things cost,” says co-owner Conor Gabb about the thinking behind the pricing. “We can make enough money off a £7.50 Negroni: There’s not a lot of labor involved. It’s a 75-milliliter drink with 25 milliliters of alcohol that doesn’t cost a lot. We’re not losing money on it.” he adds. They are “selling like hotcakes — 40 to 50 per night,” at his 130-seat restaurant. Plus, he says, the price instills customer trust when they peruse the rest of the menu and the wine list.
None of these operators pretend the economics are simple. Rent, labor, tariffs and the cost of quality spirits all push prices higher. Those factors caused Ross Simon, owner of Phoenix’s Bitter & Twisted, to recently raise prices, to keep his popular bar viable. Drinks went up about 13%, from $15 to an average of $17 in January after almost two years at the lower prices. Simon notes that the average prices are still below the low 20s that are the norm at hotels in the area.
Among these operators, there’s a shared conviction that the $20-plus cocktail has gone too far. “Where it all went wrong is people just started making cocktails at that price that wasn’t justified,” says Gus’ Beary.
As Davy sees it, the stakes extend beyond any single bar to ensure people can keep drinking. “In order to maintain the wins of the last 30 years of cocktail culture,” he says, “there is an imperative to make sure that newer cocktail drinkers aren’t priced out of the experience.”
