- For 100 guests and a five hour full bar, plan about 550 drinks: 220 beers, 22 bottles of wine, and about 14 bottles of spirits.
- The rule: two drinks per guest the first hour, three quarters of a drink per hour after, plus a ten percent buffer.
- Use the calculator for your guest count, hours, and bar style. It gives cases, bottles, and glasses.
- Compass sizes the final list to your exact menu and brings everything but the bottles.
The Calculator
Guest count, hours, and bar style in. A shopping list out. Start with the defaults, which are a 100 guest wedding with a five hour full bar, then change anything.
Planning numbers with a ten percent buffer built in. Based on two drinks per guest the first hour and three quarters of a drink per hour after, 750ml bottles, five glasses per bottle of wine, and 1.5 ounce pours. Your final list from Compass is sized to the exact menu.
The Worked Example: 100 Guests
Here is the answer most people came for. For 100 guests and a five hour reception with a full bar, plan on about 550 drinks after the buffer. That breaks into roughly 220 beers (ten cases), 110 glasses of wine (22 bottles, split about two thirds white and sparkling to one third red for a summer wedding, the reverse in fall), and 220 cocktails, which is around 14 bottles of spirits spread across the menu. On a three drink signature menu that usually means five or six bottles of the headline spirit and three or four each of the others.
Two things move that number more than anything else. Hours: a four hour bar needs about 20 percent less, a six hour bar about 20 percent more. And the crowd: a beer crowd shifts the split toward cases, a cocktail crowd toward bottles. We ask both questions before any list goes out, which is why the BYOB guide describes the model as a conversation, not a formula.
How The Math Works
Two drinks per guest in the first hour, about three quarters of a drink per hour after that, times a ten percent buffer. That is the planning rule nearly every bar professional uses, and it holds up at weddings because cocktail hour is the heaviest pour of the night. From the total, the bar style sets the split: a full bar runs about 40 percent beer, 20 percent wine, 40 percent cocktails in New Jersey. A signature menu pushes cocktails to half. Beer and wine only splits about 55 to 45.
Conversions are the boring part the calculator does for you: a 750ml bottle of wine pours five glasses, a 750ml bottle of spirits pours about sixteen cocktails at a standard 1.5 ounce measure, beer is one can or bottle per drink and 24 to a case. Round everything up. Running out at ten is a memory; an extra case is a gift to the newlyweds.
What Compass Sizes That The Calculator Cannot
The calculator does not know your menu. A frozen drink uses more base spirit than a highball. An espresso martini needs coffee liqueur and cold brew that the beer and wine columns never see. Mocktails pull sparkling water and juice off the list entirely. Once your menu is set, Compass sends an exact list by bottle and brand, and brings every mixer, juice, garnish, cup, and bag of ice on the trailer. Your job is the bottles. The BYOB guide walks through what a real list looks like, and the backyard wedding bar checklist covers the ways the shopping list gets built into a backyard timeline.
Leftovers go home with you. Many New Jersey stores take unopened case returns if you ask before buying, so ask, and keep the receipt. For a shore house bach weekend the bach weekend guide runs the same math for a smaller group over a longer window.