Beverage Calculator Information

Plan on one drink per guest for each hour of your function.

This should ensure you have enough alcohol for your party (unless you are having a college fraternity party – then you may have to rethink your calculations).  The time of day also matters. Use your best judgement. Here’s the common formula behind the drink calculator:

# of guests x hours of party time

Let’s assume you are throwing a 4 hour evening party for 100 guests. In other words, 100 guests x 4 hours = 400 drinks.

Now, let’s assume you will serve beer and wine.

BEER: How Much Do You Need?

40% of all party drinks are commonly beer.

# of total drinks x 40% or 400 x 40% = 160 beers

To order kegs, you need to make sure you can serve 160 beers.  (A standard keg contains 15.5 gallons of beer or 165 12-oz servings.)

If you are serving beer cans, that is 160 beers or 6.67 cases, so round up to 7 cases.

WINE: How Much Do You Need?

Wine accounts for 60% of all remaining drinks.  So you can use the formula:

(Total # of Drinks – Beers) or (400 – 160) = 240 glasses of wine

A standard bottle of wine (750ml) serves approximately 5 glasses per bottle for calculations. Divide the total number of glasses you need by 5.  In this case: 240 glasses of wine / 5 glasses per bottle = 48 bottles of wine. This is 4 cases of wine.

Now you need to decide how many bottles of red, white, and sparkling wine you need.  Consider whether the event is an indoor/fall, winter, spring event or an outdoor/summer event.  At an indoor/fall, winter, spring event people will drink more red wine so you should plan for 50% of the bottles being red, 25% white, and 25% sparkling.  In our example, this would mean you need 24 bottles of red, 12 bottles of white, and 12 bottles of sparkling.  If you are planning an outdoor/summer event, you can split the bottles evenly between red, white and sparkling.  Using our numbers, this would mean you needed 16 bottles of each red, white, and sparkling.

When buying multiple bottles of wine, you will definitely want to buy it by the case.  Round up to the next complete case. Having a few extra bottles ensures that you will not run out.

We hope this was helpful. If you still need assistance with estimating, please ask our staff for advice.