Setting Liquor Pars for Bar(s) and Liquor Room
SETTING PARS:
You’re going to be setting 2 individual pars.
Bar Pars (each bar has it’s own par), and Liquor Room Par.
These pars are set as follows based on tracking each bar’s annual trend (so you need a full year to do this accurately, but those pars will hopefully go up when business increases).
Both pars are based on 1.5X the busiest period.
BAR PAR:
For bars, that period is one business day. So if the busiest day & night shift behind the bar was 8 bottles of Absolut, the bar (which means the shelves, any cabinets, and any liquor closets the bar uses) needs to have a 12 bottle par for Absolut. The same goes for every other liquor or liqueur behind the bar.
LIQUOR ROOM PAR:
For the liquor room that par is 1.5X the busiest ordering period. Liquor, wine, and beer may need to be divided based on which distributor they are because one may deliver weekly (so your ordering period is one week for that one), and a second distributor may only have enough to justify a delivery once every two weeks. So whatever your individual largest order for a given ordering period per distributor was for each liquor, liqueur, beer, wine, mixer etc was, multiply that by 1.5 too. That’s your full buffer in case of shortages at the warehouse, in case a delivery is missed, in case something screws up like a hurricane, flood, whatever – your bar has enough, but not too much.
Source: Grossman’s Guide to Wines, Beers, & Spirits, 8th Edition. ~Harold Grossman & Harriet Lembeck.
Site Author, David J. Curtis: David Curtis, a seasoned professional with decades of bartending and bar management experience began his career in Midtown Manhattan, NY, tending and managing bars before diving into Manhattan’s bustling nightlife club scene. Over the years, he has mastered high-volume, high-pressure bartending as the lead bartender in iconic Midtown clubs and tended bar briefly in the Wall Street area, generating over $1,350,000.00 annually in personal drink sales. He has since extended his expertise to establishments in Georgia and now Tampa in Exclusive Platinum Service Awards Clubs, Florida. David’s roles as a Bartending Instructor at the American Bartending School in Tampa, while maintaining a second job bartending, and his years experience of managing bars, and working as a Brand Ambassador along with his extensive professional library of over 1,000 bartending books, highlight his dedication to continually refining his craft. He holds a diploma in Bar Management and is BarSmarts certified by Pernod Ricard.
