Some would say getting the bar right is the most important aspect to any Marquee Wedding! So let’s make sure we get this right. It is quite possible to run a bar at your wedding and make a small profit to contribute towards your total wedding cost.
If somebody told you you could get 10% off your total wedding cost, for a little bit of extra work you’d take that right?
This article is for someone who is wanting to run a pay bar for their wedding where it is the expectations of the wedding guests to pay for their own drinks.
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There is a little more work involved by doing it yourself and the below guide shows you what is required to make a small profit behind the bar to pay for some of your wedding.
It is absolutely possible to make a reasonable (£1-£k) profit behind your bar whilst ensuring your guests are paying reasonable prices.
You have two main choices with regards to running a pay bar for your wedding at home:
1) Get a mobile bar hire company in
- Pros: No effort on your part. More alcohol choices & draught beers etc
- They bring in all infrastructure require to run the bar
- Cons: Your guests will be paying typical pub prices per drink. Will be expensive if you are covering the bar bill yourself. Generally most mobile bar companies tend to have quite old, dingy looking bar set ups
2) Organise the Bar “Yourself”
- Pros: Can have a bar design exactly how you’d like it – different bar design choices.
- Drinks will be far cheaper as you’re sourcing yourself from supermarket, Majestic, Costco etc
- You can make a £1-3k profit behind your bar to go towards paying some of your wedding
- Cons: Little more work on your side to order the alcohol. Also need to organise bars, fridges, chiller trailers, bar staff, glass hire etc (Between your marquee hire company & your caterer you can organise this quite easily!)
Running a bar from your wedding at home can be a lot more simple than you think. Your caterer & marquee hire supplier can bring in all the infrastructure necessary to run a bar at home. Your marquee hire company brings in the bars, fridges etc whilst your caterer can help with glassware and bar staff. (Shameful plug – Abacus can help bring in all of the infrastructure ourselves!)
It’s way more cost effective than bringing in an external bar hire company to do this. Bringing in another company to provide this service means your drinks have to pay for another company’s overheads etc – let’s explore the idea of providing the bar yourself and allowing you to make a small £1-£k profit to go towards paying your wedding.
Organising your own bar could mean you could earn a small profit to contribute to the overall costs of your wedding
Providing a Pay Bar for Your Wedding
You just need to organise two things.
1) Bar Infrastructure
Mainly comprising of bars & fridges, chiller trailer, bar staff, glassware, bins & accompaniments (trays, bottle openers etc)..and of course the alcohol (will get on to that later)
2) a Temporary Events Notice.
If you are providing a pay bar and “selling” the alcohol you will need to apply for a Temporary Events Notice which costs around £10 from your local council. Make sure you do this in plenty of time as councils don’t tent to set records for fastest administrative tasks!
This TEN, informs the council you do not have a licence to sell alcohol however you are looking to temporarily sell alcohol for a one off event.
Bar Choices
Your marquee hire provider should be able to give you a range of different bar styles to choose from depending on the theming of your wedding. There are wooden bars for more rustic weddings, LED bars, black & mirrored bars for more of a contemporary feel. You can check out the different bars we offer here.
Depending on budget, if you want something a little more out there and unique you could also take a look at Liquid Bar Hire too. However they will eat into your profit!
Bar Staff
The general rule for cash bars is you need a bar staff for every 40 guests coming. So for 150 guest wedding it would be advised to have at least 4 staff. To be safe, I always have one more than necessary for larger events to ensure a smooth operating bar that’s serving drinks fast.
There always needs to be a “floater” when it comes to bar staff. They are the one collecting glasses that have been left by guests, and ensuring the bar is topped up with fresh glasses and the fridges are stocked at all times.
It would be ideal if your bar staff were trained bar experienced people than getting tempted to pay some local students as they be a lot cheaper.
Running a bar during the peak of a wedding is quite an intense adventure and you need people with initiative, training and experience to make sure they can keep up with the pace, deal with money and just make everything run smoothly.
Your caterer or marquee hire supplier should be able to help you source bar staff. You might get an economy of scale using your caterers event staff as they could double up with food serving/ bar staff – so definitely talk to your caterer first!
Tills
It being a pay bar you will need 1-3 tills depending on the number of guests you have. Tills will always slow the bar staff down so it’s likely you’ll need one extra staff than usual to compensate this (nobody likes waiting for drinks!)
Your caterer or marquee hire supplier should be able to help you source tills.
Price your drinks so your bar staff can easily add things up in the head. Tills can be pre programmed however it will make things easier such as giving change back if drinks are priced to the £1 or 50p.
E.g Price your Drinks as £4.50, or £5 rather than £5.15 etc. It’s all about making your bar staff’s job as easy as you can so you ensure you have a quick operating bar! Getting the right change back quickly is paramount for a fast flowing bar.
You’ll need a float of around £200 per till so you can provide change. Again keeping your prices to the £1 or 50p means you just need a lot of £1 and 50p coins with smaller note denominations (thinking at the start of the bar most people will pay with £20 notes. So you’ll need a lot of change). So this will involve a trip to the bank.
Make sure you get a few drinks menus made so guests know what’s available and how much everything is. Give your bar team a few of these so they are familiar too!
Working Out How Much Alcohol to Buy
This will be around an hour’s work for you – We always suggest to put your guest’s names on one axis of an excel spreadsheet, with your proposed drinks choices on the other axis. Then guess what each guest will drink from your drinks menu. Typically guests might have 6 drinks on average. Add up your total at the bottom and add 20% just in case. Remember you can send back any unopened alcohol after your event.
We always suggest to keep the bar as tight as you can in terms of available choices. Your guests know it’s a wedding in a field/home and you don’t have a pub attached in your back garden.
Stick to one beer, one wine of each type and perhaps 3-5 spirits so you don’t have too many half used bottled after the event. Most supermarkets work on a sale and return basis so don’t be afraid of over ordering as you can send it back after your wedding. They also now deliver too, so in terms of the extra effort compared to a mobile bar…there’s not that much more effort and your bar bill will be half the price compared to bringing in a mobile bar company.
You’d just need to inform your guests in good time there is a pay bar which will be cash only. Organising card machines for a one-off event is a huge faff and quite expensive.
Our suggestions on where to buy alcohol (ideally ones that deliver for you)
Majestic Wines (free glass hire)
The usual supermarkets
Top tip – Make sure you over order on glassware…the worst thing for a bar is to run out of clean glasses. Guests have an annoying habit of leaving an empty glass somewhere and asking for a fresh one. Glasses tend to be around 20p per glass, so it’s not going to break to bank to slightly over order.
Also check to see if Majestic Wines still offer free glass hire if you order the alcohol with them – at the time of writing this was still the case. So you get a pretty good saving there! Majestic can even deliver ice too!
Other Bar Bits
Your marquee hire company or caterer will be able to help you source everything you need to run the bar for your wedding. If you’re having a wedding in a field it would be advised to hire a refrigerated chiller trailer to store your alcohol in and keep it cool – especially if your wedding is mid summer. The cooled alcohol is then transferred in the fridges at the bar so you always have chilled drinks. You can stick the wedding cake in there too!
For the little bits such as empty bottle bins, drinks trays, corkscrews, bins etc there’s a great company based in Luton called Jaspers Hire who would be able to deliver all the extra little things a bar needs
Remember to clean up
If you have trained bar staff they will know to ensure the bar is cleaned up by the end of the evening. Your clean up crew for the next day after your wedding will just need to make sure everything behind the bar, in the fridges/chiller trailer is removed and empty so they are all ready for collection.
You’ll also have a fair few bin bags of empty bottles and packaging to get rid of. If you’re having a 100+ person wedding it would probably require a small van to remove the rubbish ready for recycling. So if you don’t know anyone with a van you can hire a small van for around £70 for the day.
If you really like the idea of arranging your own bar to make a small profit to pay for some of your wedding you are not alone. We complete dozens of weddings every year applying the above principles allowing our customers to put the £1-£3k pf profit to go towards their total wedding costs. If you would like more of a chat about about then then please call us on 01462 262012 or email me directly at [email protected]
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