I am not aware of such a formula, nor any max profit either. During my short time with taverns the high sky seemed to be the limit. (Number one reason to my great interest towards taverns in the first place. Making right choices I could receive astonishing results.)
There are other nice points that IMO defend tavern keeping in contrast with workshops, but there are some disadvantages too, methinks. In my quite limited experience there was no amusing chaos that I so expected. Everything went pretty smooth and money flowed in to my household in torrents - until I tried to let Kelly Mc'Tiernan (the urching girl with her own agenda) work in my tavern as waitress or something. (Barkeep has the choice with workers position, and he/she always picks the most profitable job for any given tavern worker) With Kelly there the business stopped like it had suddenly met a heavy brick wall. What actually happened, I do not know and as you can easily guess, I hastily let Kelly go and run the RRC to a certain church and the reverend there. The business recovered overnight, no problem, but the thing left me wondering.
Bouncers reduce chaos rating, you say. I have read about the same thing, IIRC, just not been able to prove it in my taverns and probably never will. I stopped tavern keeping in my current game-effort mostly for game-play reasons. I took on other hobbies and didn't actually anymore need those pitifully few daily millions from taverns.
