Stocking a Bar for an Event: A Planning Guide

Most people planning drinks for an event get one of two things wrong: they buy far too much of the wrong thing, or they run out of ice at 8pm. Both are avoidable with an hour of arithmetic.

This is how we work it out when someone calls us about a birthday, an engagement or a company function. It is a planning method rather than a shopping list, because the right list depends on who is coming.

Start with the guests, not the bottles

Before any quantity, answer three questions.

How long is the event? A three-hour function and a six-hour one are completely different problems. Consumption is not linear either — it is highest in the first ninety minutes, then drops.

Is there food, and when? Substantial food slows everything down. Canapés for three hours does not.

Who is actually coming? A room of thirty people in their sixties drinks differently from thirty in their twenties, and a work function drinks differently from a wedding. If a meaningful number of guests are drivers, pregnant, observant, in recovery or simply not drinking, that changes the ratio more than anything else on this page.

The arithmetic

A widely used planning baseline is one drink per guest for the first hour, then one every hour after, with the understanding that actual consumption varies enormously and that your job is to have enough, not to have it all consumed.

For 50 guests over four hours, that is roughly 250 drinks across the whole room — but only if every guest drinks throughout, which never happens. In practice, planning for 60 to 70% of that figure and keeping a small reserve is closer to what actually gets poured.

What a bottle gives you

Plan on the 45ml line for spirits. Unless a professional is pouring, nobody measures, and the difference between the two rows is the difference between having enough and a panicked trip to the bottle shop.

A worked example: 50 guests, four hours, food served

• Assume 35 of the 50 are drinking with any regularity
• Assume around 3 drinks each over four hours → ~105 drinks
• Split: 45% wine and sparkling, 35% spirits, 20% beer or non-alcoholic
• Wine/sparkling: ~47 drinks → 9 bottles, round to 12
• Spirits: ~37 drinks → at 15 per bottle, 3 bottles, round to 4
• Beer/NA: ~21 servings, plus generous non-alcoholic beyond that

Four bottles of spirits for fifty people surprises everyone. It is right. The common error is buying a bottle of everything — eight or nine spirits for an event that will pour three.

Buy narrow, not wide

The most useful advice we give is to stock two or three drinks properly rather than everything badly.

Pick one clear spirit and one dark, or build around two signature cocktails and one good wine. A well-made gin and tonic that does not run out beats a bar with eleven bottles where five are untouched and the popular one is gone by nine.

If you are running cocktails, pick ones that batch. A margarita, a negroni or a spritz can be pre-mixed in quantity and poured over ice. A drink that must be shaken individually will bottleneck the moment more than ten people want one.

Our cocktails range covers mixers and pre-batch components, and spirits is the full shelf.

The things people forget

Ice. Roughly 1kg per guest, more in a Sydney summer. Ice is used for chilling bottles as well as filling glasses, and it is the one item you cannot improvise at 8pm. Buy more than feels sensible.

Mixers. Budget around three mixers per spirit drink. Tonic, soda, ginger beer, cola — and buy small bottles or cans rather than large, because a two-litre bottle goes flat long before it is finished.

Citrus. One lime yields about 30ml of juice and eight wedges. Count backwards from your drinks list.

Glassware. Plan 1.5 to 2 glasses per guest — people put them down and lose them. Hire is usually cheaper than replacing your own.

Somewhere to put rubbish, and a plan for empties. Unglamorous, always forgotten.

The non-alcoholic half

This is the part most guides treat as an afterthought, and it is the part most likely to be noticed.

Plan for at least a third of your guests to be drinking little or nothing — designated drivers, people who are pregnant, people on medication, people who simply do not drink. That proportion is higher than most hosts assume and it is rising.

The thing that matters is not quantity but quality. Soft drink and tap water is provision; a proper non-alcoholic option is hospitality. Good tonic with grapefruit and ice in a real glass, a decent ginger beer, a non-alcoholic sparkling — any of these mean a guest who is not drinking is not standing there holding a plastic cup of lemonade feeling like a problem to be managed.

Make sure water is visible and free-standing, not something people have to ask for.

Serving responsibly

If you are hosting, you carry some responsibility for how people leave.

• Never top up a glass mid-drink. It makes it impossible for anyone to track what they have had, including them.
• Serve food throughout, not just at the start.
• Do not serve anyone under 18. In NSW it is an offence to supply alcohol to a minor on private premises without their parent's or guardian's authority, and rules differ by state — check the ones that apply where your event is.
• Do not serve anyone who is intoxicated, and have a plan for getting them home. Rideshare details on the invitation cost nothing.
• If you are hiring staff, use someone with a current RSA.

Ordering with us

We do event and function supply, and there are two things worth knowing.

We would rather talk through the guest list than take a list of bottles. Tell us the number, the duration, whether there is food and what people actually drink, and we will work the quantities with you — usually downward.

We also pack and label by carton with the contents on the outside, so setting up at the venue does not involve opening nine identical boxes to find the gin.

Call 0452 480 487 or email sales@spirithaus.com.au.

SPIRITHAUS PTY LTD · NSW Packaged Liquor Licence LIQP700301260. It is against the law to sell or supply alcohol to, or to obtain alcohol on behalf of, a person under the age of 18 years. Enjoy responsibly.