From event brief to complete bar order in one minute.
Enter guests, hours and bar type. A hundred guests on an open bar get three bartenders and a barback, not one bartender and a stack of disposable cups. Every ratio comes from nearly ten years of high-end private events around the world. Want your next event to run instead of survive? Start free without an account.
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Recommended staffing and ice
Free for every event, based on your guest count, duration and service complexity.
Staff
Ice
Event consumption varies depending on guests, weather, service style and other factors. Calculations are planning estimates and should be adjusted to your specific event.
Now get the complete bar order
Every bottle counted per product, down to the limes and the mint, plus one consolidated shopping list as an Excel you can hand to whoever does the buying.
- Alcohol & wine
- Beer
- Cocktails & recipes
- Mixers
- Fresh ingredients
- Water
- Glassware
- Complete shopping list
- Excel export
Your complete bar order
Three steps to a complete bar plan
Tell us about your event
Guests, duration, event type, weather and how your crowd drinks. It takes about ten seconds.
Choose what you're serving
From a simple beer & wine setup to a full cocktail bar with your own signature recipes.
Get your complete event plan
Staff, ice, bottles, ingredients and a consolidated shopping list, all downloadable as Excel.
What can you calculate?
Where the numbers come from
PourBrief comes out of Green Jar Ibiza, the cocktail catering company behind hundreds of weddings and private parties, some of them for the biggest names on the planet. The engine spent a year on those events before it became a website. Every rule in it is pinned by more than 200 automated tests.
If your events look like ours (weddings, private parties, corporate bars), the numbers will feel familiar. Where they disagree with yours, we want to hear it. That is what the founding period is for.
How to plan drinks for any event
Anyone planning a wedding or a big party runs into the same two or three questions: how many bartenders, how much ice, how much alcohol. Order too little and the bar dies an hour early. Order too much and you have wasted money and a mountain of leftovers.
Professional caterers count bar serves rather than finished drinks: glasses go half-drunk, cocktails melt, and someone always orders two at once. The working ratio behind this calculator is about three serves per guest per hour, with a stronger first hour and a quieter stretch at the end of very long events. A crowd of 100 over five hours means roughly 1,550 serves across the bar, before you adjust for the type of event and how your particular crowd drinks. PourBrief applies those adjustments and splits the total across wine, beer, cocktails, soft drinks and water.
Ice is where most orders come up short. The rule here is the one real bar crews buy by: one 2 kg bag (4.4 lb) of cube ice per guest plus crushed for the cocktails at a 6-hour event, scaled to your actual duration, with a large freezer recommended from 100 guests so it all survives a hot day. Everything rounds to the bags you can actually buy, 2 kg and 10 kg sacks in metric, 20 lb bags in the US.
Staffing runs from one bartender per 50 guests on a simple beer and wine service to one per 20 on a cocktail-heavy menu, with barbacks, runners and glass collectors added as the event grows. The calculator above gives three levels, minimum, recommended and comfortable, so you can decide where to sit on that range.
Frequently asked questions
How many bartenders do I need for 100 guests?
As a rule of thumb for 100 guests: 2 bartenders for a beer & wine or mixed bar, 3 for a cocktail bar and 4 for a cocktail-heavy menu, plus a barback. Large events need fewer bartenders per guest; the free calculator handles that scaling for you.
How much ice do I need for a 100-person party?
Plan about 2.6 kg (5.7 lb) per guest for a 6-hour event: one 2 kg bag (4.4 lb) of cube ice plus crushed for the cocktails. A 100-person event needs around 260 kg (574 lb), which is 130 bags of 2 kg (30 of 20 lb). A 3-hour event still takes about 60%, and a 12-hour one a bit under double.
How many drinks per person should I calculate?
Professional bars plan in serves rather than finished drinks: about 3 per guest per hour once service is running, a bit more in the first hour, easing off at the end of very long events. The calculator adjusts this for your crowd and event type.
How much alcohol do I need for a wedding?
It depends on guests, hours and your bar menu. For 100 guests over 5 hours a professional bar plans around 1,500–1,700 serves, plus fixed per-guest quantities of wine and beer. PourBrief converts it all into exact bottles per product.
How many cocktails can I make from one bottle?
With a standard 50 ml pour, a 700 ml bottle of spirit yields about 14 serves; a 1 L bottle about 20. Cocktails with 45–60 ml of base spirit yield slightly fewer.
How much wine do I need for 100 guests?
A 750 ml bottle pours 6 glasses of 125 ml. Professional caterers plan 1 glass per guest at a standing event. With a seated dinner they plan 1 glass of white and 1 of rosé per guest, plus 1 bottle of red per 25 guests: about 38 bottles for 100 wedding guests.
How much beer do I need for a party?
Professional caterers plan about 1.5 small beers per guest: 150 bottles of 300 ml for 100 guests. If your crowd is beer-first, raise that figure. Every ratio in the calculator can be adjusted.
How accurate is the calculator?
It is a planning estimate built on nearly ten years of real high-end catering budgets, adjusted for your event's size, duration, weather and service style. Real consumption still varies with your crowd's tastes, age and the occasion, so every result carries a safety buffer you can set yourself.
What if the numbers don't match how my company plans?
Then we want to hear it. The engine runs the operating rules of a working bar catering company, but no two operations pour alike. The drink mix and the quantity level are adjustable, and founding members' corrections shape what gets built next.
What happens if I pay and it isn't for me?
Every purchase has a 14-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked: write to us and you get every cent back. You can cancel a subscription anytime through Stripe.
Do I have to subscribe, or can I pay for just one event?
Both work. The Event Pass is a one-time payment that unlocks everything for 72 hours, enough to plan one event and export the Excel, with no subscription behind it. Pro monthly and annual cover unlimited events.
Will the price go up after the founding round?
Yes. The first 10 founding members pay less than half the future price and keep it for as long as they stay subscribed. Once those seats are taken, new subscribers pay the full price.