Margins
What is a good GP for a pub in Ireland?
Every publican has a GP number in their head. Fewer know their achieved GP — the one that comes out of an actual stocktake. Here is what we see across the venues we count.
10 September 2026 · Craig Haugh, Apex Stocktaking
The ranges we see
As a broad guide for Irish venues: draught beer typically sits around the mid-to-high 70s percent, packaged beer and cider a little lower, spirits in the high 70s to low 80s when measured and priced correctly, and wine anywhere from the mid 60s to mid 70s depending on the list. Food-led sites usually work to a kitchen GP in the mid 60s to low 70s.
Treat these as signposts, not targets. Your correct GP depends on your buying, your pricing and your mix — a gastropub doing craft cocktails will not look like a local wet-led bar, and it should not.
Expected GP versus achieved GP
Expected GP is what your prices and cost prices say you should make. Achieved GP is what the count says you actually made after everything that left the shelves is accounted for. The gap between the two is your variance, and it is where the real story is.
Two pubs can have the same expected GP and wildly different bank balances. The one counting regularly knows why.
What drags GP down
The usual suspects, in roughly the order we find them: over-pouring on draught and spirits, draught waste not recorded, staff drinks never rung through, selling prices not updated after a cost increase, wrong PLU buttons on the till, and breakages written off in the bin instead of on a docket.
Individually each looks small. Together they are routinely worth a few percentage points of GP — which, on a busy bar, is thousands of euro a year.
How to move it
You cannot manage a number you only see once a year. A regular stocktake gives you achieved GP by period and by product group, so you can see whether a price change stuck, whether a new line is earning, and exactly which products are leaking margin. That is the difference between hoping the GP is right and knowing it is.
Want this handled for you?
Apex takes stock in bars and kitchens across Ireland — managed stocktakes, or our lower-cost Self-Count model — with the full report in your hands the same day.