Wedding Cakes & Food Forum

HELP: Alcohol costs - $1200 for a keg!??! What were yours?

I am having a bit of an issue with my vendor's catering menu - they are wanting to charge $1000 for a domestic keg, or $1200 for a premium keg. Per bottle would be $7. I am expecting about 100 guests, and I cannot for the life of me begin to understand how someone can charge $1200 for a keg. I'm hoping to have a few examples of other vendors' costs to help with my negotiations, if anybody wouldn't mind sharing your cost for a keg? The wedding is in Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico. 

Re: HELP: Alcohol costs - $1200 for a keg!??! What were yours?

  • I would figure out exactly how many drinks (and how many ounces per drink) you are getting with the keg. I would call around to a few different venues and ask about keg prices and see if you can get a quote emailed to you.

    Taos is a bit pricey and secluded so you may be stuck with that charge due to transportation/exclusivity.

    Have you signed a contract? If so, what does your contract say about outside alcohol purchases.

    Personally, I would go with bottles as then you can have better variety.

  • Thanks for your reply! We signed a contract for a $5000 minimum for food and beverage total, which we're meeting with the food alone. No outside alcohol is aloud at the venue, we can only go through their on-site catering, so we're a bit stuck with those options. They note that a keg is equal to 165 beers. So, 165 bottles would be $1155, about $845 savings that route, but still much higher than expected.

    I think you're right about the bottles, in having more variety. The wine is also $33/bottle so we're basically plan for a half-and-half situation between beer and wine among the guests, as best as we can guess knowing both sides of our families and friends. 

    I think I will call around to other local vendors and even the brewery they use as well to get some direct quotes to help with negotiations. Thanks for the suggestion!
  • A Standard size keg is approximately 200 12oz. glasses of beer...  The real question relates to how heavy of drinkers your guests are because for <100 guests, I'd just opt for bottles because the chances of them drinking 7 each is minimal at best and that's half the cost of a keg and you get more variety...  Also, with that contract, you aren't in a negotiating position, minimizing damage to your wallet yes, negotiating, unfortunately no..
  • Wow that does seem expensive! (Basing my knowledge of keg prices solely on quarter-barrel prices in a college town... ;)

    It does seem like you might be further ahead to go with bottles. They would be easier to take home (does your venue let you do this?) so it's not wasted. It sucks to have a partial keg sitting around. You also can provide much more variety. I like the suggestion of checking with venues around the same area to see what they charge, which might give you a little bit of negotiating leverage.

    Lurkers, this is kind of a good heads up to check everything related to your venue before signing a contract!
  • That's quite pricey. Is this a situation where the venue is the only option or does the venue have preferred vendors where you can choose between a few? If the latter, ask for quotes from the other vendors and use it as leverage to negotiate. If it's just through the venue, well you signed a contract, and they have no incentive to lower their prices as they know they're your only option. 

    Note to lurkers: before signing ANY contract, it's your responsibility to ask for pricing lists from the venue and/or the preferred vendors so that you know if you can afford the venue before committing to it. 
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  • The total cost around 1000$...Not much more amount.
    [Removed for ToS violation] for my daily food diets :p
  • Thats a lot!
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