Consumption bar vs pay by hour?

[Deleted User]

Does anybody have an opinion of a consumption bar vs a bar that is paid by the hour? Our top choice venue is consumption based, rather than by the hour. What are the pros and cons?

jacques27

It's a know your crowd situation (in addition to knowing the cost per hour vs. the individual drink cost and time of day/style of reception).  I'm the biggest drinker in my family (and that's not often).  My friends are light to moderate drinkers and drink mostly wine and beer and the occasional whiskey.  For my situation, a consumption bar is likely going to cost way less than a packaged per person host bar.  Additionally, for a daytime wedding, I'd go with consumption.  The cons are you don't know your total upfront and could end up with a nasty surprise at the end of the night though.  Additionally, even if you do have a pretty good handle on your crowd's drinking habits, you always need to mentally add extra because people tend to drink more when in a celebratory environment and more drinks tend to get abandoned (set down to dance, come back and it's cleared away or they don't remember where they left it) .  Pros are obviously that you have the potential to save a lot of money in certain conditions depending on your crowd.

Then, with per person it's pretty much the opposite.  You could end up paying a lot more than consumption with a light drinking crowd, but you could also end up saving money if you have a heavy drinking crowd.  You also know upfront what your costs are and can budget appropriately, which can be a huge plus if there isn't a lot of leeway in your budget for surprises or you're just the nervous sort who doesn't like to be surprised.

floridabride44

Cons to a consumption bar (one venue we were considering had by consumption as its only option, so I thought this through a lot back when we were choosing our venue)

• Not knowing your cost up front. Your venue can give you an estimate but you never really know how accurate that is. Our initial quote from this venue, for approx 120 people, was $2500 for open bar, but when I actually toured the place the guy showing us around said a recent wedding of around 60 people who were big drinkers easily hit $2500. I didn't want to get smacked with a bar bill that was 2 or 3 times our estimate at the end of the night. 
• Servers/bussers taking away half full drinks. Have you ever been to a wedding where you leave your table for 1 minute and come back and your drink has been cleared? If my bar was by consumption I would freak out every time I saw one of the wait staff clear an unfinished drink. ("I PAID $6 for that rum & coke, what are you doing!??!") I didn't want that worry in my mind during my entire wedding. 

Pros of a consumption bar

• If your guests aren't big drinkers, you'll probably save $$$
• You only pay for the people who are drinking. For example, I know for a fact that my grandparents don't drink anymore, yet I'm still stuck paying X dollars per head for their open bar even though they won't have a single drink. By consumption, if they aren't drinking, I'm not paying for it!

tcnoble

We had a similar debate. Finally settled on a per person open bar.

For Consumption -

1. You don't know your final cost

2. It's common at venues for waiters to pick up barely consumed drinks - friend goes to the bar, gets drink, OMG MY FAVORITE SONG!! sets it down to dance, waiter picks it up. Money in the trash. Literally.

3. You could potentially save a LOT of money if your crowd is mostly non-drinkers. Or, you might not save money if they are big drinkers.

4. You don't know your final cost (I say this one twice because if you're following a budget, this could be a major major issue)

For Per Person open bar -

1. You know your final cost.

2. No matter how many drinks your friends leave half drank, you don't pay per drink

3. You may end up paying $35 (just throwing a number out there) for your Aunt Susie to drink one glass of wine and water all night.

4. Your friend that drinks 3 drinks per hour might make up for Aunt Susie

5. You know your final cost (again, this is especially important if you're budgeting)

We ultimately chose a per person open bar because my dad (who is paying for the wedding) expressed that he would be really stressed all night watching drinks get tossed or go to waste, knowing he was writing a check at the end for all of it. We completely understood and he was comfortable with the per person open bar, so we went with that.

[Deleted User]

Thank you for all of the input! The consumption based bar is the one con on the venue we are looking at right now. Our families drink as do our friends, and we could both see ourselves stressing all night at all the unfinished drinks that are being tossed. We're going to see if we can work something out with the venue, or find another location where it is per person rather than consumption. 

southernbelle0915

Our RD was consumption by the drink - saved us money. I guess we didn't have a big drinking crowd. Open bar by the hour was going to mean each guest drank 4-5 drinks over the course of 3 hours. That simply wasn't going to happen with the vast majority of our guests.

Our wedding was consumption by the bottle. Our caterer bought all the bottles and if any weren't opened, it was deducted from our total. The only drawback to this was that we had to pick from liquors they stock (so they could use the unopened bottle at another wedding). We had a few off the menu selections - a bourbon, a scotch, etc. so we just told them how many of those. Our cater was cool and let us take the unopened bottles of off the menu stuff since we'd paid for it. I think we ended up paying less this way - the total bar tab was $9-10K for 175 and we had a pretty good selection. A good deal overall I think.

MesmrEwe

You can cap the consumption bar by doing tickets or some such for alcoholic drinks (2 per guest - those that don't drink will give them to those that do so it balances out) then cover all NA's..  That way you aren't stressing the whole night because it's capped at the number of tickets collected (I've known a lot of people to use wooden nickels for this and instead of using them for drinks people take them home to remember the day), and the NA's aren't usually too excessive for cost. 

Viczaesar

MesmrEwe said:

You can cap the consumption bar by doing tickets or some such for alcoholic drinks (2 per guest - those that don't drink will give them to those that do so it balances out) then cover all NA's..  That way you aren't stressing the whole night because it's capped at the number of tickets collected (I've known a lot of people to use wooden nickels for this and instead of using them for drinks people take them home to remember the day), and the NA's aren't usually too excessive for cost. 

Drink tickets are not appropriate.

[Deleted User]

MesmrEwe said:

You can cap the consumption bar by doing tickets or some such for alcoholic drinks (2 per guest - those that don't drink will give them to those that do so it balances out) then cover all NA's..  That way you aren't stressing the whole night because it's capped at the number of tickets collected (I've known a lot of people to use wooden nickels for this and instead of using them for drinks people take them home to remember the day), and the NA's aren't usually too excessive for cost. 

SITB

Thanks for the suggestion, but I've seen too many posts on this site warning against drink tickets. I'd feel awful having to cap people's alcohol consumption to only two drinks. 

peachy13

One exercise I did before deciding I wanted a pay-by-the-hour open bar was I imagined what one of my friends might drink during the course of the reception: a few wines during cocktail hour and maybe a strong one, another couple of wines with dinner, and maybe another strong one, followed by some beers towards the end of the night. The consumption cost was more than the hourly cost, which is how I made my decision. Good luck!

[Deleted User]

Thank you so much for your help everyone! We were able to talk to the venue and it turns out they do offer per person options that weren't included in the initial info they gave me! After serious consideration, there was no way we could justify doing a consumption based bar, so now we can do hourly!

Dreamergirl8812

I know the point is moot but I agree with your decision bookish. I'm glad you won't have to spend your wedding noticing out of the corner of your eye every time a guest walks off without their drink or has a SQUIRREL!! reaction to someone else's drink and has to promptly replace theirs with the better one.