by Homerun Nievera, Negosentro.com | How to Build the Perfect Bar | Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or just want to spruce up the at-home setup, everyone could use a nice bar. Bars are universally loved as locations to kickback with friends. Aside from the obvious entertainment a bar offers, bars can be lucrative financial investments as well. There’s no passive income like the income you can garner from a nice, well-run bar. However, building a bar is not as easy as gathering up liquor and pouring people drinks, you would be surprised what you need, like Co2 cylinders. Aside from liquor licensing, you need to ensure your bar is stocked with the latest and greatest in supplies. Any competent bartender can run a small location entirely on their own, but it takes a facility that’s well-stocked to really stand out from the rest of the crowd.
Proper Cups
This is an obvious one, but you’d be surprised how many aspiring bartenders leave out a good set of cups and glasses. You need to be aware of your clientele. You’re not just serving beer from the tap. You want to keep a large array of cocktail and highball glasses available for individuals looking to enjoy mixed drinks. For beer drinkers, they require all sorts of specified glasses as well. For larger parties, keep a stock of pitchers in your arsenal. Since drops and accidents are common, it’s recommended to use plastic pitchers. Aside from durability, plastic pitchers insulate cold beverages a lot better than their glass counterparts. Plastic pitchers will keep ice cold beer at the ideal temperatures for enjoyment.
Keep in mind that you will be serving customers with sophisticated tastes. This means the advanced-level drinkers will demand service that meets their expectations. You don’t want a customer to ask for a Collins glass and receive a martini glass. If a customer wants a rocks glass, nothing is more embarrassing than giving them a highball glass instead. These are little things that sound silly to the non-drinker, but these are very important points to consider. Drinkers are finicky people, and you want to be prepared to serve them to the best of your ability. A big part of this effective service will be dependent upon your stock of glasses and cups.
Quality Blenders
In an era where flavour is everything, a lot of customers demand comprehensive drinking options. Nothing affords you more flavour-mixing options than a high-quality blender. Blending is a big part of making drinks—especially of the mixed variety. While any old Jack and Coke can be made without a blender, modern day drinks might require a lot more ingenuity. Complex fruity drinks that require lots of fruit juice volume need a high powered blender to process a lot of fruit fast. This means you can serve those Mai Tais and Long Island ice teas quicker with a solid blender.
The blenders you want to look for are of the juice-focused variety. While it may seem ridiculous, there are actually some blenders primarily made for fruits and vegetables. These blenders have better internal configurations so they won’t get jammed up as easily as a lower quality blender. Also, these “juicers” will have specialized shot glasses that will allow your servers to prepare shots or smaller mixed-fruit drinks with ease.
Aside from juices and hard-to-liquefy items, blenders can be used for more utilitarian purposes as well. If you’re trying to really chop down the ice in a mix, a good two-minute run in the blender will take care of any issues. Blenders are extremely crucial for these reasons, and it should be a main priority to at least keep one or two available.
Tools of the Trade
It doesn’t matter if you’re employing the best bartenders in town or are just doing it on your lonesome, top shelf bartending equipment is a must. You could have the greatest bar staff in the world, but if they have bad equipment, they won’t be able to do their jobs effectively. This is why you can’t cheap out on the little things like strainers, mixing glasses, muddles, and other must-have accessories.
The top priority is a mixing glass. This is a specialized cup and top that will allow a bartender to make just about mixed drink on the menu. If you want to make a Jack and Coke, you must have a mixing glass to properly mix the liquids. If you’re going for a Whiskey Sour, you have to get your bartender a good mixing glass. They’re extremely cheap, and you can easily stock up on a large quantity of mixing glasses.
Strainers are also very critical to keep in your bar. These effectively combine different liquids, and they amplify the synergistic effect of the mixed substances. Muddlers are yet another cheap yet necessary item. A muddler is a small blunt rod that is used to emulsify a solid or semi-liquid mixture. These are great for mixing Mojitos or other fruit-based drinks that include sprinkles of smaller herbs or mints.
Make sure your bartender has all of these tools, and you’re ready to serve whatever you want to whomever you want.
Let the Games Begin
Any good bar isn’t complete without a quality set-up of bar games. There are a few classics everyone knows like darts or cards, but you can’t forget about snooker either. Whether you’re serving customers in your bar or just friends at home, not everyone drinks. You have to keep these guests entertained, and there’s no better way to keep them busy than some classic bar games.
A lot of these classic games can easily be found in classic bar supply shops. Whether it’s Pattersons catering supplies in Bristol or somewhere else, these locations will keep any number of classic bar games available for purchase. When you’re out and about looking for the proper bar game, look for ones that are either brand-new or lightly used. You don’t want to invest in something that’s likely to break the first time you or your customers try and have some fun.
Aside from games, any solid shop will allow you to find the rest of your bar equipment in the same convenient location as well.
* * *
Looking into articles on the Food Business? Check out FoodFindsAsia.com.
* * *
Homerun Nievera is a serial techpreneur, digital marketer and professional speaker.
Apart from managing tech enterprises, Homerun is the publisher of a blogazine network that delivers niche content to its audience.
He also a Certified Distance Educator from the University of the Philippines and has launched Edusentro.com with the objective of bringing free education to under-served areas everywhere.
As a blogger, Homerun writes across various topics but looks into techpreneruship as his main course.
He seeks to help entrepreneurs build their digital presence and make a difference. Follow Homerun on Twitter @bnievera or like his page on Facebook.
