How to Run a Bar for an Event at Home
Some would say this is the most important aspect to any event. (I’d probably agree too!). Now, there are a few ways you can go about things when running a bar for your event at home. The most important thing is obviously sourcing the alcohol. That’s best (and cheapest) to source yourselves from a supermarket or a wholesalers such as Majestic or Costco (who also deliver!). My recommendation is you just simply order online and get it delivered to your door and make it really super simple for you. Most supermarkets offer a sale and return basis so you can over order and send any unused drinks back after the event.
I would suggest to to keep your bar choices really tight. Don’t offer too many options otherwise you’ll end up with lots of half drunk bottles. So keep the spirits to maybe two or three options. One option of beer, red wine, and white wine, and Prosecco, or champagne, and then some mixers. Try and keep it really concise. Your guests will know you’re running a garden event at home and you’re not running a full-time bar. So keep things really concise and really small. And that will keep the unopened drinks to a minimum afterwards.
The Bar Experience
In terms of how you deliver the bar experience, you have got a couple of options. It can be self-service by having a bar or a table, or better still, having a staffed bar. You could stock some of the alcohol in the fridge in your kitchen. It’s not something we would advise mainly for a couple of reasons. If you are doing any catering yourself or bringing in an external caterer, chances are the fridge in your kitchen is most likely going to be needed for the food. So trying to squeeze in the drink there too is going to cause a few problems. Also for some strange reason us humans like to congregate in kitchens at parties – So you’ll end up with people bottlenecking by the entrance to the doors and it will become a bit of a pain and it just really won’t work that well.
In terms of how to deliver the best experience for your guests it’s always best to have the bar and the fridge set up ideally in the marquee. What that does it stops people from congregating in kitchens and having groups of people scattered around. It retains the atmosphere within the marquee which is the main secret of success of a great party at home – keeping everybody in the same room. You’re going to get the best atmosphere if everyone is in the same place. By bringing the bar and the fridge in the marquee, you’re going to guarantee most of your guests are going to stay there as well.
By keeping the bar within the marquee will ensure we keep everybody in the same room – maintaining a great party atmosphere
But my biggest recommendation I can make by a mile is by having the bar staffed. The reason being is you are the host of your event and you’ll be going into “host mode” without staff as you’ll be fetching people drinks as they arrive. Before you know it it’s midnight and you’ve been getting people drinks all night and you’re the one that’s been planning this event. It might even be something that you’re celebrating yourself and you’ve not had the chance to have conversations with people as you have been too busy getting drinks for everybody.
If you do get people to work behind the bar, it will work wonders for your party, I promise you. If you’re working with a budget, it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg either. It might involve employing a couple of your kids for the evening, and getting for them to work behind the bar. Better still, have an events company like us to bring in bar-experienced bar staff to go in and work behind the bar will work wonders. This would totally transform the experience for you and your guests throughout the evening.
If you want to further enhance your guest’s experience with a bar – you can have cocktail trained bar staff to make fresh cocktails for your guests. These do tend to be a little more expensive than general bar staff (mainly because you are paying for their experience and also you need more staff if making cocktails) – but cocktails are always a hit for home based events.
Having bar-experienced staff will work for two reasons. One, for yourself and the experience that your guests are going to have will be far better with people who do this week in week out working behind the bar, especially if you’re thinking about having cocktails. Also the bar staff will periodically go and do the rounds and tidy up glasses and empties everywhere. It just means that the next day when you might be feeling a little bit worse for wear no doubt, the cleanup operation has already been done by the bar team the night before. So I cannot recommend bar staff highly enough.
Bars can come in all sorts of designs & sizes to suit any theme and size of your event
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Sometimes it’s far easier giving these sort of tasks to the people that do this week in, week out. We can bring in the complete bar infrastructure, including bar and cocktail-trained staff, bars and fridges, glassware, ice and freezers and all the bar condiments needed to make everything work like clockwork. If you are needing any help on how to run a bar for your party at home – you can email me here give our team a call on 01462 262 011 now.
