How many drinks to buy for a party
Estimating drink quantities for a specific headcount like 75 guests leaves hosts guessing whether their total alcohol supply will run out. Without knowing how many individual drink orders to plan for each option, organizers risk buying too much or running dry mid-event.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Polling guests ahead of time
- 2Offering all options as mocktails to cover non-drinkers
- 3Providing a variety of liquor types to appeal to different preferences
- 4Following general rules of thumb like one drink per person per hour
- 5Buying extra cases of canned drinks or batching margaritas
- 6Checking ratios of wine to beer based on crowd preferences
- 7relying on general industry rules of thumb for drinks per hour
- 8guessing based on guest demographics and regional preferences
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“For 75 guests, about 69 of which will be drinking, is this enough alcohol?”source ↗
“We need your help so we can figure out how many orders of each drink we should plan for!!”source ↗
“how can you tell what people would gravitate towards instead if they normally would have gone for spirits?”source ↗
“We're trying to decide how to break things down between our drink options and feeling lost, would welcome your advice!”source ↗
“need help figuring out what percentage should be wine vs beer vs cider vs punch.”source ↗
Where this came up
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