Wedding and function bar stock: three ways to charge, three ways to lose track

A good wedding is the best till day of the month and the worst stocktake of the quarter, and it's usually the same seven days. The bar took a fortune, the count comes back short, and nobody can say which of the ninety prosecco toasts ever touched the till. None of that is fixed on the night. It's fixed in the booking conversation, before a single glass is polished, because how the function pays decides how the stock gets recorded.

Pubs run functions three ways: a cash bar, a tab, or a per-head package. Each one loses stock differently, so take them in order of danger.

Cash bar: easy, one trap

Guests pay as they go, every drink crosses the till, and stock control is a normal trading day with better volume. The one trap is geography. If the function runs from a second bar, and that bar was stocked by carrying cases through from the main bar with nothing written down, your next count can't tell the function's performance from the main bar's. Move stock to a function bar like a delivery: quantities out, quantities back, on paper. If the function bar is even semi-regular, make it its own location in your stock system so it reads separately; that's the same one-page discipline as a members' bar, and it's how you find out the function bar runs a different yield than the lounge.

Tab bar: easy to run, easy to bleed

Everything gets rung as normal, charged to one account, settled at the end. The recording is fine, when it happens. Where tabs bleed is the verbal round: the father of the bride waves a hand at a tray of drinks, someone says "on the tab", and under function pressure three of the twelve glasses get rung. The fix is a rule, agreed with whoever holds the tab: nothing leaves the bar without being rung to the tab first, and they get the itemised printout at the end, not a round number. That printout protects you twice, once against missing stock and once against the awkward conversation when the bill lands. Cash bars and tabs both settle their stock story on the night. Packages don't, which is why the next section is the longest.

Package bars: pre-sold drinks are invisible drinks

Arrival drink, wine with the meal, a glass of fizz for the toast, all priced per head on the function invoice. Commercially lovely, paid up front, no queue at the till. For stock control it's the dangerous one, because the money moved weeks before the pouring, so on the day the bar pours for hours with nothing crossing the till at all. Count day then finds a pile of missing stock, and the till has no idea the wedding happened.

The fix costs nothing: zero-priced package buttons. One for "package arrival drink", one for "package table wine 175ml", one for "package toast fizz". Every pour gets rung, the till shows £0 against each, and the units are on record. Your stock movement now matches a written pour count, and the package's real consumption is a report you can read afterwards, which also tells you whether the per-head price was right. It's the same principle as prepaid pints left in the pump: a drink that's been paid for but not yet poured must still exist as a record, or your variance swings both ways and means nothing. It also answers the couple's favourite question, "did we drink all the wine we paid for", with a printout instead of a shrug.

Ordering for a function without drowning in leftovers

The per-head planning figures the bar-hire trade works to are a reasonable starting shape. VIVA Bar Hire's published guide runs: one drink per guest per hour plus one extra in the first hour, half a bottle of wine per head with a seated meal, and around three to four drinks per head across a four-hour evening do, splitting very roughly 40% beer and cider, 30% wine and fizz, 20% spirits, 10% soft. Treat all of that as their planning convention, not gospel, weddings vary wildly with the crowd, the weather and whether it's a free bar.

Worked through for an 80-guest evening reception, author's arithmetic: 240 to 320 drinks, of which roughly 100 to 130 will be beer and cider. A firkin holds 72 pints on paper and pours mid-60s sellable, so that's two casks, or one 50-litre keg plus packaged backup. For the meal, 80 guests at half a bottle is 40 bottles of wine, and you'll want the split biased white and rosé in summer, red in winter, with more zero-alcohol provision than you think: VIVA's own guidance is to aim for 20 to 30% of total volume alcohol-free. Where your wholesaler offers sale-or-return on sealed cases and full containers, use it, and the leftover problem mostly disappears.

Three questions to settle in writing before the day

Who owns unopened package wine at the end of the night: the couple paid per head, so do sealed bottles go home with them or stay yours? Either answer works, an argument at 11pm doesn't. Corkage, if they're bringing their own: a per-bottle price, agreed in advance, and their stock stored separately from yours so it never enters your count. And the tab ceiling, if there is one: who gets told when it's close, and does the bar switch to cash or stop.

The count that closes the function

Count the function bar back in before you restock it, the same night or first thing next morning, while the pour records are fresh. Then square three numbers: stock consumed, till records including the zero-priced package units, and the function invoice. If the function week straddles your stocktake period, the timing rules from the mistakes checklist apply double, book everything in first, and keep the function's stock movements inside one period where you can.

One more thing, because functions are where this instinct runs strongest. When a wedding count comes back short, the story writes itself: casual staff, chaos, hands in the air. In my experience the shortfall is almost always recording, pours under pressure with no button for them, not people. Give the bar the buttons and the transfer sheet and the "shrinkage" mostly evaporates; the unexplained loss guide covers what to do on the rare occasion it doesn't.

Common questions

How much drink does an 80-guest evening reception need?

Working from the bar-hire trade's per-head shape, 240 to 320 drinks: roughly 100 to 130 beers and ciders, 70 to 95 glasses of wine and fizz, the rest spirits and softs. Bias it to your crowd, order sale-or-return where you can, and keep a packaged reserve rather than an extra keg you'll have to tap to serve.

Should the function bar be its own stock location?

If you use it more than a few times a year, yes. A separate location turns "the function room did something to our numbers" into a report you can actually read, and it makes the before-and-after count a two-minute job instead of an untangling exercise.

Who owns leftover wine on a per-head package?

Whatever the booking form says, which is the point: put it on the booking form. Common practice is sealed bottles stay with the house and opened bottles go to the top table, but any clear rule beats a generous guess made in front of the bride's father.

Do free-bar and package drinks really need till buttons?

Yes, zero-priced ones. The till isn't just a cash machine, it's your pour record, and a function that pours for four hours with no till events leaves your stocktake blind. Ten seconds a round keeps the count honest and gives the client an itemised answer instead of an estimate.