A latte poured at an event costs about $2.05. Ask around and you'll hear "about a buck," but that figure only counts ingredients, and if you price off it you give away close to a dollar a cup.
The figures here come from a mid-tier cart setup on a 100-drink event. Your supplier prices won't match them, but the proportions tend to hold.
Layer one: what goes in the cup
| Item | Basis | Per drink |
|---|---|---|
| Espresso | 18g at $0.022/g | $0.40 |
| Whole milk | 8oz at $0.044/oz | $0.35 |
| Cup, lid, sleeve | per set | $0.37 |
| Subtotal | $1.12 |
That's the "buck" people quote. It's accurate as far as it goes, but it covers just over half of what the latte costs you.
Layer two: overhead
Overhead is the money that goes out even in a month you don't pour a drink. Spread across 100 drinks, it comes to:
- Permits and insurance: $0.22
- Commissary and utilities: $0.18
- Card processing, Square's 2.6% + 15 cents on a $6 drink: $0.31
- Subtotal: $0.71
Layer three: getting to the event
These go up with every booking you take, however many drinks you end up pouring at it. On a 20-mile round trip they look like this:
- Fuel: $0.05
- Loading and setup, 45 minutes at $18/hr: $0.14
- Parking and tolls, averaged: $0.03
- Subtotal: $0.22
The all-in number
$1.12 + $0.71 + $0.22 = $2.05 per latte. That's about 1.8 times the ingredient cost. A lean setup with cheap permits lands a little under it.
Sell that latte at $6 and you keep about $4. The 93 cents a cup that the ingredient math misses comes to about $186 on a 200-drink event, and about $1,860 over ten events like it.
Running it on your own numbers
For layer two, take each yearly bill (permit, insurance, commissary) and divide by the drinks you pour in a year. For layer three, price each trip separately and divide by that event's expected drink count. A 40-mile drive or a two-hour load-in changes layer three fast, so don't reuse one event's figure for the next.
Why small events need a floor
The second and third layers don't shrink with headcount. A 30-person office meeting burns the same fuel and the same 45 minutes of loading as a 150-person one, and the permit doesn't get any cheaper. Spread over 30 drinks, the overhead per cup roughly triples. For events under 75 guests, set a minimum of around $500 no matter what you charge per drink. The coffee cart catering pricing guide turns that floor into per-guest rates by region and event type.
As a rule of thumb, expect your cost per drink to run about 1.75x to 2x your ingredient cost. VenVen's Event Calculator runs the same three layers with your own prices and venue distance.
The Numbers is a VenVen column. Costs, prices and margins, worked out line by line.
