For a wedding reception, lets say you have the following situation that can't be changed:

120 guests
Probably about 75-80% are going to have alcohol
You will be serving alcohol for 4 hours

Scenario 1:
Consumption bar- this means you pay for the actual drinks they consume
It will cost ~$4 per beer, and ~$5 per glass of wine
You will be charged a 26.75% on-top to cover gratuity and sales tax

Scenario 2:
Hosted bar~ this means you pay a flat rate for them to drink as much as they want
$23 per person
You will also be charged a 26.75% charge on top.
This scenario will cost: $2760 + $738=$3500

I am most interested in comments for those in the industry, as they probably know more often than not which will save.

5/13/2009 12:10:05 PM

i think usually consumption ends up being cheaper, but we went with the per person charge so we wouldn't subconsciously want to tell people to quit drinking as much! (plus i'd say a large percentage of our guests drank.)

5/13/2009 12:20:53 PM

My guess would be for a consumption bar. Of course you would have a few alcoholics drinking 10 beers but my guess is, unless you have a bunch of your old frat buddies coming, most of the drinkers will be mom having her 2 glasses of wine or Granpa Burt having 2-3 beers.

5/13/2009 12:21:26 PM

I've been to what seems like a ton of weddings, rehearsal dinners, and wedding parties in the past couple years and I'd say it depends on

1) Temperature (if it is an outside reception)
and
2) Clientele

If they are quoting you $23 per for hosted that is probably going to be ballpark for you. If it is inside without many party animals, I'd go consumption. If it is hot and you know the patrons are known to get their drink on, go hosted. I'm not a huge drinker myself, but I was at a wedding a couple weeks ago and had 4 beers over the course of a few hours and I imagine my wife had 4 glasses of wine and a beer. It was warm to start the reception but ended up cool, we were outside.

5/13/2009 12:21:56 PM

i'm not in the industry but basic math suggests consumption bar is the way to go.

If everyone drinks beer:
120 guests, assume 100 will drink
Beer is $4/drink, so to equal or go beyond Scenario #2, each guest would have to drink 9 beers (10 actually as the # is 9.4).
Wine is $5/drink, so to equal or go beyond Secnario #2, each guest will have to drink 5 (actually 6) glasses of wine.

If you're serving for 4 hours the wine is possible, averaging a glass per hour isn't anything to a lot of people, and some will drink more while some will drink less.

However given that beer is $1 cheaper, I highly doubt that people will consumer 10 beers (on average) in 4 hours. Some may, but I'd assume that the vast majority won't.

Like I said I'm not in the industry... but factoring for the "most expensive" scenario I'd still choose consumption. That is, unless the 100 people that are drinking are known for consuming a LOT of alcohol!

5/13/2009 12:21:57 PM

With those two as your only option, I would go with #1.

Even if 100 people drink 3 glasses of wine or 4 beers on average, you still come in lower. That's on the high side of drinkers and and probably high on the average of consumption.

I doubt that those 100 drinkers would drink 4 glasses of wine or 5 beers on average to make scenario 2 worthwhile.

5/13/2009 12:22:15 PM

One factor I don't know if you have considered is the bartender/venue.

If its a consumption bar, you pretty much get what you pay for (aside from variances in wine glass pouring/volume). The venue has no financial gain by pouring smaller drinks (assuming a beer = a bottle or can).

In the hosted bar, the venue absolutely has interest in making sure the bartender doesnt pour full wine glasses or full beers. You better believe they will be counting how many cases of X they give the bartenders.

My 2 cents.

5/13/2009 12:30:48 PM

96 people (80%) would have to drink an average of more that 7 beers for the consumption bar to cost more than the hosted bar.

96 people * 7 beers * 4 dollars/beer * 1.2675 = $3407.04

5/13/2009 12:43:56 PM

My husband is a caterer so I come w/ "industry advice"

The norm is 3-4 drinks per person...if you do a hosted bar, they will charge you $23/person whether or not a person has a drink. It really depends on if your guests are heavy drinkers or not...I went to a wedding for a Canadian couple that had a hosted bar...would have hated to see the bill if it was by consumption

Its all about math.

5/13/2009 12:49:38 PM

the plane will take off
/chit chat

^,^^ ftw

5/13/2009 12:59:21 PM

trust me when i say this: go for the flat fee for everyone. we didn't have as high a percentage of drinkers as you claim to have, and we were only a couple hundred under what the flat rate "open bar" would have cost (we had decided to pay per drink beforehand).

of course, in our situation, had the 'pay per drink' method end up costing more than the 'flat rate' method, our guy would have just charged us the flat rate. he's cool like that. i would imagine most places aren't.

also, we had beer, liquor, and wine.

[Edited on May 13, 2009 at 1:01 PM. Reason : .]

5/13/2009 1:00:38 PM

Lots of good info. A few more details. This is in August (hot) in an ourdoor tent (unairconditioned), on Bald Head Island. People will know they have a one hour ferry ride back to the mainland to look forward to.

5/13/2009 1:13:41 PM

oh yeah, if it's an outdoor wedding in august and there is no air conditioner to be had, be ready for people to drink more.

besides, you say people might only have one or two drinks, but when you put people around free booze crazy things happen. again, trust me on this.

5/13/2009 1:14:56 PM

with the pay as you go option, we were able to start drinking two hours before the ceremony. That wouldn't have been an option with the open bar price.

5/13/2009 1:55:34 PM

Ive sent them an email asking if they can give us whatever is lower after the fact. I stated that if I was forced to go consumption, I would be pushing the alcohol, where-as I wouldnt if I had financial incentive for them to drink less. I am looking forward to telling everyone just before the bar closes to make sure they go get a soda/beer/top off of their wine just before it closes.

The entire wedding at bald head is over the top. But not my choice.

5/13/2009 1:57:16 PM

hahaha yeah we had our DJ yell out "LAST CALL" to everyone right before we made our official exit.

and as a result, half the guests were double-fisting and couldn't properly blow the bubbles to give us our send off

[Edited on May 13, 2009 at 1:58 PM. Reason : .]

5/13/2009 1:58:36 PM

the important question is: where is my invitation?

5/13/2009 2:05:53 PM

Man, the invitations are hugely difficult. We only have space for 120 people. We have 160 people on the guest list. We think we have identified 30 of those people who we know wont come, and then there should be another 5-10% that we think will come but wont. Could be interesting...

5/13/2009 2:18:15 PM

At the Canadian wedding I was at w/ open bar, the bride's mother (not Canadian) was getting so worried about how drunk all of the groom's Canadian friends were getting....so she shut down the open bar about 1 hour before the reception ended.


The next thing I knew was all the Canadians going in their pockets and pulling out their pre-filled flasks

5/13/2009 2:31:05 PM

imma have a byob wedding

or maybe just a keg

Quote :

"Ive sent them an email asking if they can give us whatever is lower after the fact"

if they did this, why wouldn't they just do consumption with a max of $3500 for everybody?

[Edited on May 13, 2009 at 5:49 PM. Reason : .]

5/13/2009 5:46:23 PM

My brothers wedding in Germany was Scenario 1 and there were less than 100 guests...his total for drinks came out to about 5,000euro's. Granted these were germans drinking and me haha...so that doesn't help.

5/13/2009 6:36:46 PM

our wedding was july 08 in san diego.

we had maybe 75ish of legal drinking age, but with a full bar. i think they wanted ~$2000 for open bar for the 5 hours. we instead prepaid like $800 towards consumption. once that was hit people would have to pay out of pocket... but we never even hit the $800 and got like $250 refunded.

i think it has a lot to do with the guests, ours was mostly family, and only maybe 15 people between ages 21 and 30.

5/13/2009 8:45:13 PM

What's the 26.75% on top of the all you can drink? Corking fees? Cap fees? What?

PM if you want, I did wedding catering for 5 years.

5/13/2009 11:54:32 PM

just go dry wedding so everyone will talk about how shitty your wedding was

5/14/2009 3:36:45 AM

Quote :

"People will know they have a one hour ferry ride back to the mainland to look forward to."

The ferry ride is only ~20 minutes.

5/14/2009 4:20:39 AM

Quote :

"just go dry wedding so everyone will talk about how shitty your wedding was "

5/14/2009 9:56:15 AM

hosted due to weather and location.

if it was inside, and you know that most of the people are light drinkers then consumption...

5/14/2009 11:45:24 AM

I'LL COME DRINK, JUST LET ME KNOW WHEN AND WHERE

5/14/2009 12:27:26 PM