Bars - Consumption or Per Person?

peachy13 · August 2014

We're doing per person. The venue gave me a drink price menu and I hypothetically pictured what it would cost for a few people I know well (and who will be drinking for sure), conservatively tacking on a couple of strong ones at the beginning of the night, wine during dinner, and beers during dancing, totaling a much higher amount than the cost per head.

However, my friends are boozebags and are also all staying overnight. Think of your average guest and think of how much they would normally drink.

jacques27 · August 2014

Sars06 said:

2) The breakdown of drinks consumed will be about 65% wine/15% beer/20% liquor. Our guests consumed about 20% wine/20% beer/60% liquor. Guess which option was most expensive? Oops.

Those assumptions are apparently what event planners use as a rule of thumb, so I'm sure they are probably pretty accurate for most crowds. But not all crowds, apparently!

Just one more data point for you to consider.

Part of the trick to figuring out whether it will be more cost effective to do consumption vs. pp is to not guess WHAT they will drink and instead always assume the most expensive option and multiply by that.

Drinking habits change at formal and/or celebratory events when people aren't paying for it. I drink a lot of wine at home and compare notes about wine with my friends. But if people were to guess that I'm going to prefer wine at your wedding? They would be dead wrong. Except for bourbon that I drink straight and have one good bottle of it in my cabinet, I don't drink a lot of hard liquor a lot of the time because I just don't like the hassle of keeping a lot of mixers and garnishes on hand. But out at a celebratory event with someone else doing the mixing - you can bet your bottom dollar I'm drinking hard liquor.

So again, guessing is really really hard and really only do-able unless you're intimately familiar with ALL of their drinking habits having seen them in other similar settings - not just what you think they drink most at home or at a nice dinner out.

Sioux1986 · August 2014

jacques27 said:

Sars06 said:

2) The breakdown of drinks consumed will be about 65% wine/15% beer/20% liquor. Our guests consumed about 20% wine/20% beer/60% liquor. Guess which option was most expensive? Oops.

Those assumptions are apparently what event planners use as a rule of thumb, so I'm sure they are probably pretty accurate for most crowds. But not all crowds, apparently!

Just one more data point for you to consider.

Part of the trick to figuring out whether it will be more cost effective to do consumption vs. pp is to not guess WHAT they will drink and instead always assume the most expensive option and multiply by that.

Drinking habits change at formal and/or celebratory events when people aren't paying for it. I drink a lot of wine at home and compare notes about wine with my friends. But if people were to guess that I'm going to prefer wine at your wedding? They would be dead wrong. Except for bourbon that I drink straight and have one good bottle of it in my cabinet, I don't drink a lot of hard liquor a lot of the time because I just don't like the hassle of keeping a lot of mixers and garnishes on hand. But out at a celebratory event with someone else doing the mixing - you can bet your bottom dollar I'm drinking hard liquor.

So again, guessing is really really hard and really only do-able unless you're intimately familiar with ALL of their drinking habits having seen them in other similar settings - not just what you think they drink most at home or at a nice dinner out.

This is what we did when deciding. At our venue (DISNEY WORLD!) the

"most expensive" drink option is wine at $9 a glass. Cocktails are $7 and beer $5-6. So we did a "worst case scenario" formula and found that it would be about the same as the "per head" plan if that happened. So, consumption for us!

indianaalum · August 2014

peachy13 said:

We're doing per person. The venue gave me a drink price menu and I hypothetically pictured what it would cost for a few people I know well (and who will be drinking for sure), conservatively tacking on a couple of strong ones at the beginning of the night, wine during dinner, and beers during dancing, totaling a much higher amount than the cost per head.

However, my friends are boozebags and are also all staying overnight. Think of your average guest and think of how much they would normally drink.

SITB:

Disagree. In addition to above, you HAVE to consider how many drinks get "wasted" and the person goes up for me because they lost their drink, or it accidentally got taken away, etc. Believe it or not, that can add up VERY quickly.

At my own wedding, I think I ordered 5-6 drinks, but basically drank less than 1 total drink all night. I would get one, someone would sidetrack me, and I would lose it. I would go back up and it happened again.

Sometimes how much someone DRINKS vs how many drins they GET is different.

If you have ever hosted a party at your house, think of how many half empty pop cans or beer cans you find at the end of the night and think about it THAT way....People open a beer/pop, move around before they drink it, and so they just get a NEW one without finishing the first one.

This factor is HUGEEEE in this decision

Another thing to consider. I actually (cuz she is nice) had my best friend as me ahead of time, "Are you doing consumption or open bar". The reason she ASKED is because she wanted to know if she could "try" new drinks without accidentally rising up my tab. She informed me that since I was having "open bar", she was going to try new things. If she didn't like them, she wouldn't feel so bad when she wasted them! LOL.... My point is that people won't assume you are doing consumption, they will most likely "assume" open bar, so they might just do what my friend asked about. They might be willing to be more "wasteful" and "experimental" with their drink choices.

huskypuppy14 · August 2014

indianaalum said:

peachy13 said:

We're doing per person. The venue gave me a drink price menu and I hypothetically pictured what it would cost for a few people I know well (and who will be drinking for sure), conservatively tacking on a couple of strong ones at the beginning of the night, wine during dinner, and beers during dancing, totaling a much higher amount than the cost per head.

However, my friends are boozebags and are also all staying overnight. Think of your average guest and think of how much they would normally drink.

SITB:

Disagree. In addition to above, you HAVE to consider how many drinks get "wasted" and the person goes up for me because they lost their drink, or it accidentally got taken away, etc. Believe it or not, that can add up VERY quickly.

At my own wedding, I think I ordered 5-6 drinks, but basically drank less than 1 total drink all night. I would get one, someone would sidetrack me, and I would lose it. I would go back up and it happened again.

Sometimes how much someone DRINKS vs how many drins they GET is different.

If you have ever hosted a party at your house, think of how many half empty pop cans or beer cans you find at the end of the night and think about it THAT way....People open a beer/pop, move around before they drink it, and so they just get a NEW one without finishing the first one.

This factor is HUGEEEE in this decision

Another thing to consider. I actually (cuz she is nice) had my best friend as me ahead of time, "Are you doing consumption or open bar". The reason she ASKED is because she wanted to know if she could "try" new drinks without accidentally rising up my tab. She informed me that since I was having "open bar", she was going to try new things. If she didn't like them, she wouldn't feel so bad when she wasted them! LOL.... My point is that people won't assume you are doing consumption, they will most likely "assume" open bar, so they might just do what my friend asked about. They might be willing to be more "wasteful" and "experimental" with their drink choices.

What are you disagreeing with? Peachy said she is doing per person (which is open bar, flat feet) not consumption. She said the consumption came out much higher than the per person without even adding in the "wasted drinks".

You guys agree!

indianaalum · August 2014

huskypuppy14 said:

indianaalum said:

peachy13 said:

We're doing per person. The venue gave me a drink price menu and I hypothetically pictured what it would cost for a few people I know well (and who will be drinking for sure), conservatively tacking on a couple of strong ones at the beginning of the night, wine during dinner, and beers during dancing, totaling a much higher amount than the cost per head.

However, my friends are boozebags and are also all staying overnight. Think of your average guest and think of how much they would normally drink.

SITB:

Disagree. In addition to above, you HAVE to consider how many drinks get "wasted" and the person goes up for me because they lost their drink, or it accidentally got taken away, etc. Believe it or not, that can add up VERY quickly.

At my own wedding, I think I ordered 5-6 drinks, but basically drank less than 1 total drink all night. I would get one, someone would sidetrack me, and I would lose it. I would go back up and it happened again.

Sometimes how much someone DRINKS vs how many drins they GET is different.

If you have ever hosted a party at your house, think of how many half empty pop cans or beer cans you find at the end of the night and think about it THAT way....People open a beer/pop, move around before they drink it, and so they just get a NEW one without finishing the first one.

This factor is HUGEEEE in this decision

Another thing to consider. I actually (cuz she is nice) had my best friend as me ahead of time, "Are you doing consumption or open bar". The reason she ASKED is because she wanted to know if she could "try" new drinks without accidentally rising up my tab. She informed me that since I was having "open bar", she was going to try new things. If she didn't like them, she wouldn't feel so bad when she wasted them! LOL.... My point is that people won't assume you are doing consumption, they will most likely "assume" open bar, so they might just do what my friend asked about. They might be willing to be more "wasteful" and "experimental" with their drink choices.

What are you disagreeing with? Peachy said she is doing per person (which is open bar, flat feet) not consumption. She said the consumption came out much higher than the per person without even adding in the "wasted drinks".

You guys agree!

I will clarify. She mentioned "you have to consider think about your average person and how much you think they would drink."

MY POINT is that if you think about it THAT way, you will underestimate how much you will spend in the evening because MANY people might drink 1-2 drinks, but have actually gone to the bar to get a drink 4-5 times only to misplace those drinks or have them taken away accidentally by wait staff, etc...

(see my personal example above of my wedding)

Sorry if I wasn't clear. You basically pay for how many times a person GOES to the bar to get a drink, not how many drinks a normal person drinks. I now it sounds silly but my example costs ALOT more money for people who don't account for that fun fact.

Hope that makes more sense

allisoneliz · August 2014

Sars06 said:
2) The breakdown of drinks consumed will be about 65% wine/15% beer/20% liquor. Our guests consumed about 20% wine/20% beer/60% liquor. Guess which option was most expensive? Oops.

We found the same thing! We bought our own booze because our wedding was at my MIL's. Figuring out how much of everything to buy was one of the things we were stressed out about the most. Most of our guests are beer and wine drinkers, so that's what we bought the most of, plus some liquor for anyone who wanted a rum and coke, or to mix vodka with the punch.

Well... it turns out that when my friends don't have to pay for their drinks, they like to indulge in the hard stuff. Which is totally fine - the only thing we ran out of was dark rum, and that was at the very end of the night - but you would not believe the beer and wine we had leftover!

caitlinmca · August 2014

See, I would love a per person bar or something of that nature so you know an exact amount however, our venue only does it two ways either by consumption or cash bar only. They don't have a per person package sadly and how our venue calculates it is strange to me, but I'm new to it all so it may not be strange how they base it to others.

We are going the consumption route and only serving beer, wine and pop, water, tea and coffee. Depending on the type of beer (domestic or import) beer is either $4 and $5, wine depending on the tier that you choose from can be $5, $7 or $9 dollars, and pop and water are $2 dollars.

They take the event time (ours is saturday evening starting at 6 PM), the # of people, and say on average people have 3 drinks, and give you a dollar amount. We have to pay that dollar amount up front prior to our event, during the wedding reception periodically our wedding coordinator will come up to us and tell us how much of our bar money has been spent, all of the drinks, non-alcoholic and alcoholic goes towards that dollar amount.

Sars06 · August 2014

jacques27 said:

Part of the trick to figuring out whether it will be more cost effective to do consumption vs. pp is to not guess WHAT they will drink and instead always assume the most expensive option and multiply by that.

But if you do that, you could end up paying a flat fee when consumption would have been a lot cheaper. Either way, you're taking a gamble.

alpacalunch · August 2014

This thread is so freaking informative. I was leaning toward consumption bar, but think PP will just be so much easier!

Our venue charges $50PP for an 8h event, including juice/pop/water. Though that's pricey (to me), they will trust us to give accurate numbers of drinkers (ie 75 coming, 60 drinkers). The PP charge for non-alcoholic drinks is like $15PP-ish.

So much of the monies. Ugh.

huskypuppy14 · August 2014

caitlinmca said:

See, I would love a per person bar or something of that nature so you know an exact amount however, our venue only does it two ways either by consumption or cash bar only. They don't have a per person package sadly and how our venue calculates it is strange to me, but I'm new to it all so it may not be strange how they base it to others.

We are going the consumption route and only serving beer, wine and pop, water, tea and coffee. Depending on the type of beer (domestic or import) beer is either $4 and $5, wine depending on the tier that you choose from can be $5, $7 or $9 dollars, and pop and water are $2 dollars.

They take the event time (ours is saturday evening starting at 6 PM), the # of people, and say on average people have 3 drinks, and give you a dollar amount. We have to pay that dollar amount up front prior to our event, during the wedding reception periodically our wedding coordinator will come up to us and tell us how much of our bar money has been spent, all of the drinks, non-alcoholic and alcoholic goes towards that dollar amount.

I think this is common. I saw that policy at a few places that had consumption bars when we were looking at venues.

KayDeee · August 2014

So to be clear, all of you posters who have been quoting $32 and $36 etc per person is that for the entire 4-6 hours open bar? Or is it that much per person for the first hour or two, then and additional $3 - $10/pp for every hour after? I am just curious because that's how a lot of the open bars in the Chicago area operate (at least ones I looked into) so wanted some insights on how it goes elsewhere.

I would have loved to have had a $32/pp 4-6 hour open bar option for a nighttime wedding.

Which is one of the reasons why we had a brunch reception at a restaurant with a consumption bar. People DO drink less during the day, but man, those heavy drinkers will be heavy drinkers no matter what time of day (could be a Chicago thing J )

So we did what we could afford and didn't have any complaints from guests about missing hard liquor.

We offered: craft beer ($7), 4 wine selections ($40 per bottle), mimosas ($3), bloody marys ($5) then soft drinks, coffees, tea and juices ($3-$5 depending, but free soft drink and coffee refills).

The wine got spendy but the per bottle price made it much more of a deal than per glass (starting at $12). Also spendy--fresh juices and lemonades, but the VERY inexpensive mimosas and bloody marys (that price is the restaurant’s daily special for those items and that price was honored at our reception, hooray!) balanced a lot of that out.

We only had 67 people and we knew our crowd well, so I made a spread sheet estimating the number of drinks each guest would have (including juices for kids and all) and it was pretty much right on point. The light drinkers did sort of balance out the heavy drinkers.

Our total tab per person was in the range of $21/pp for about 4.5 hours and we were super thrilled with that, as the beer and wine Per Person package started at $25/pp for the first 90 mins then $5/pp after every additional hour. So it wound up being about half the cost of the per person package for the 4.5 hours if we had gone that route.

But I tell you, if you are the sort of person who DOES NOT like surprises and it fits your budget, a per person route is a good way to go because you won't have to sweat that final bill out (we weren't really, but you never know!)

jenijoyk · August 2014

KayDeee said:

So to be clear, all of you posters who have been quoting $32 and $36 etc per person is that for the entire 4-6 hours open bar? Or is it that much per person for the first hour or two, then and additional $3 - $10/pp for every hour after? I am just curious because that's how a lot of the open bars in the Chicago area operate (at least ones I looked into) so wanted some insights on how it goes elsewhere.

I would have loved to have had a $32/pp 4-6 hour open bar option for a nighttime wedding.

Which is one of the reasons why we had a brunch reception at a restaurant with a consumption bar. People DO drink less during the day, but man, those heavy drinkers will be heavy drinkers no matter what time of day (could be a Chicago thing J )

So we did what we could afford and didn't have any complaints from guests about missing hard liquor.

We offered: craft beer ($7), 4 wine selections ($40 per bottle), mimosas ($3), bloody marys ($5) then soft drinks, coffees, tea and juices ($3-$5 depending, but free soft drink and coffee refills).
The wine got spendy but the per bottle price made it much more of a deal than per glass (starting at $12). Also spendy--fresh juices and lemonades, but the VERY inexpensive mimosas and bloody marys (that price is the restaurant’s daily special for those items and that price was honored at our reception, hooray!) balanced a lot of that out.

We only had 67 people and we knew our crowd well, so I made a spread sheet estimating the number of drinks each guest would have (including juices for kids and all) and it was pretty much right on point. The light drinkers did sort of balance out the heavy drinkers.

Our total tab per person was in the range of $21/pp for about 4.5 hours and we were super thrilled with that, as the beer and wine Per Person package started at $25/pp for the first 90 mins then $5/pp after every additional hour. So it wound up being about half the cost of the per person package for the 4.5 hours if we had gone that route.
But I tell you, if you are the sort of person who DOES NOT like surprises and it fits your budget, a per person route is a good way to go because you won't have to sweat that final bill out (we weren't really, but you never know!)

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The $32 per person I quoted was for a 6-hour soft bar package (craft beer, wine/champagne, sangria, soda only). We're still going with consumption anyway though. I'm 95% sure it will be cheaper given that we're not offering hard alcohol, so no one's going to be unknowingly experimenting with ordering weird drinks that they then throw out, and the per glass price she quoted us was ridiculously cheap. There's also going to be lemonade, infused water, and coffee available all night (unlimited and not part of the bar) so I'm thinking that will also keep the number of sodas purchased down. I realize it's a gamble, but I'm game for it.

huskypuppy14 · August 2014

@Kaydee I paid 36 dollars pp for 5 hours of premium open bar. The liquor choices were abundant and pretty high quality that some people thought it was top shelf.

casey8784 · August 2014

My venue doesn't offer per person, so we are doing by consumption. They had told us that it usually comes out to about $35 per person for the size wedding we are having, and very rarely more than $40 per person. Both those prices are on par with most other venues in the city. FI's brother-in-law owns a catering business and has done many weddings at this venue, and he said that in his experience, the venue didn't exaggerate/inflate the prices at all, so we're comfortable with by consumption.

Both our families are mostly light drinkers. Some friends are heavy, but none so much that we feel that they would get over the top.

Bars - Consumption or Per Person?

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