Open Bar vs. Pay-by-consumption

lcg06001

I like the idea and convenience of open bar, but with some venues' pricing I wonder if it is actually worth the cost (and I've read some places swear that a by-consumption pricing actually benefits the hosts cost-wise when all is said and done). Has anyone done a by-consumption open bar? If you don't mind sharing how many guests you had and what the grand total came to for alcohol, that would be helpful. 

 

MoonlightSilver

I think it really depends upon your guests. If your guests are big drinkers, you'd be better off with an open bar. If they'd just like to have a glass of wine or two, you might be better off with consumption. 

We had open bar, because our family is big drinkers on both sides- so unfortunately I can't help you with that. Hopefully someone else can! 

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maggieandrey

It really depends on your guests.

Our open bar is costing us $2,263.17 (my parents are helping us pay but refuse to cover alcohol, so we had our venue figure the price with and without.)

For a by-consumption bar it's $5-$7 / drink, so we figured that the break-even point is 2.5 drinks per person (based on 145 guests over 21)

We figure our guests will drink close to, or over that amount, so the open bar is worth it to us.

banana468

We had an open bar which was just part of the per head price contracted with the venue.

I think it really depends on the guests though.   For our guests, it made sense to have the open bar however if you aren't going to have a lot of drinkers, going by consumption may work.  

missmarry2013

Our bar company spelled it all out for us and the way we have it set is that we paided what we had set aside for the bar.  This way during the first 3 hours it is open bar and then my parents are paying for whatever is left over to pay.  

herb0622

Like the PP’s said, I think it will depend on how much your guests drink. If each guest is going to have 2+ drinks (on average), it would probably be beneficial to offer the open bar.