A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Chicago’s Most Exciting New Bar Program

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.