What is the best way to set bar pars for liquor, beer, and wine?

Why bar pars work differently from kitchen pars

Kitchen ingredients spoil, so pars are held tight and deliveries are frequent. Most bar products do not spoil in any meaningful timeframe, which tempts people to overstock and forget about it. The cost is not waste, it is cash sitting on a shelf, and it is space. A back bar with forty bottles that pour once a month is not a well-run bar, it is a storage unit. The other big difference is the counting unit. Kitchen items are counted in cases and pounds, while liquor is counted in bottles and tenths of a bottle, which requires a different counting habit.

Usage also varies far more by day of week and by event than most kitchen items. A well vodka might pour several bottles on a Saturday and one on a Tuesday. A special event can drain a single product that never moves otherwise. Pars need to be set against the heaviest normal period between deliveries, not the average, or the well will run dry during exactly the shifts that matter most.

Keep reading: How do you set par levels for restaurant inventory that actually hold up?, What is the fastest way to run accurate weekly inventory counts in a kitchen?, How do reorder alerts prevent stockouts before they hit the line?. See how ParLevelr helps you restaurant inventory par levels and reorder alerts.

Setting pars by category: well, call, premium, beer, wine

Well spirits are the workhorses and get the most careful pars. Count usage over a few weeks, find the heaviest delivery-to-delivery window, and set the par to cover that window plus a cushion of one or two bottles per product. Call and premium spirits move slower, so a par of two to three bottles is typical for most, with a single bottle for the slowest sellers. Anything that sells less than a bottle a month is a candidate for removal from the order sheet entirely and stocked only when guests ask for it repeatedly. Related: How does tracking usage help you right-size par levels over time?

Draft beer pars are set by keg, and the practical rule is one full keg in reserve per tap line for anything that moves, plus knowing roughly how many days a keg lasts for each product. Packaged beer is counted by case and behaves like a fast kitchen item. Wine splits in two: by-the-glass wines get a real par based on pours per week, while bottle-only wines from a list are more of a curated stock than a par item, and are typically reordered when a specific label drops to one or two bottles.

Counting partial bottles and the tenth-bottle habit

The single biggest source of noise in bar inventory is how partial bottles get counted. Eyeballing to the nearest tenth is the standard method, and it is good enough if everyone does it the same way. Hold the bottle at eye level, estimate to the tenth, and record it as a decimal. Weighing bottles is more accurate and worth it for high-cost spirits, but it is slower and needs a scale and the empty bottle weights on file. Pick one method per category and keep it consistent. Related: How do you set par levels for restaurant inventory that actually hold up?

Where the tenth-bottle habit pays off is in usage. If you count partials the same way each week, the change in total bottles per product is your usage, and your par can be based on something real. If one week's count rounds up and the next rounds down, usage swings wildly and the par either gets inflated or the bar runs short. Train every counter on the same visual scale, and have one person do the count consistently when possible.

Order day rhythm and keeping the back bar honest

Most bars order liquor once a week and beer once or twice, and the par should match that cadence. Count the day before the order, compare on-hand to par, and order the difference rounded to the case where the distributor requires it. Keep an eye on distributor minimums and case-break policies, since a par that requires ordering three bottles from a supplier that only sells by the case is not a par you can actually execute. Related: What is the best way to organize vendor order sheets across several suppliers?

Once a quarter, look at every product that did not move. Slow movers tie up cash and take up space, and a shorter, tighter back bar is easier to count and easier to keep accurate. Move dead stock into a cocktail special or simply stop reordering it. A bar that only stocks what it sells, at pars that cover the busiest normal week, is a bar that rarely runs out and rarely overbuys. Related: What is the fastest way to run accurate weekly inventory counts in a kitchen?