Maximize the space behind the bar to keep patrons – and your bartenders – happy
By Cole Younger Just
I’m a bar diner – always have been and probably always will be. I enjoy the informality of the experience and the casualness of the interaction with the person serving me. There’s a certain comfort the bar provides.
The bar is a like a choose your own adventure – you can talk with the bartender(s) and others seated at the bar, you can be the life of the party, or you can be quiet and reserved. Either way, there’s always a place for you.
That’s thanks to the design and functionality of the bar itself. If thought through from the very start of your restaurant planning, the bar can create an atmosphere of poetry in motion. Each bartender executes the task at hand in tandem with her/his comrade next to them – never getting in each other’s way while effectively taking care of the bar patrons and the high demands of the service bar for dining room guests.
Whether you find yourself providing design input on the front-end of a concept or you’re making improvements to an already existing operation, the design of the bar is crucial to creating the vibe you want for your restaurant.
To achieve the most efficient bar functionality, ask yourself a few questions first. Most importantly, what is the concept? Is your focus beer, wine, cocktails or all the above?
Perhaps you’re on the front end of the design process and are working with an architect or designer. At this stage, it’s critical to fully consider the realities of the business model and really dig in to what the concept is. Focus on that, and think about what beverages and how many you want to serve at the bar.
In an ideal world, the bartender would rarely have to leave his or her station to grab much to execute a drink. That’s called economy of motion, and it translates to improving the bottom line by maximizing the use of the most valuable commodity on a busy night – time.
Here’s a few things to consider when designing a bar – from number of wells and how many taps to include to the placement of bar equipment and the size of the bar top itself – to help your employees make the most of their time behind the bar.
Number of Wells
How many guests does your business model intend on serving during bar hours? This can help inform the number of wells or stations from which drinks will be crafted and executed.
How many seats are in your dining room? If it’s a large number, consider having a dedicated service well so the service bartender can execute craft drinks at a high pace without the stress of having to also give full service to bar patrons seated directly in front of them.
If it’s a smaller dining room, consider designing the service well with the thought that patrons who sit in front of it will put an increased demand on the bartender to fully execute the multiple tasks required with service bar and full dining service at the bar – choose the bartender to fill that role wisely.
If full-service dining is to be executed at the bar, is one well enough to accomplish that goal? Likely not. Are two wells sufficient? There’s a good chance that the answer is yes. Is three the goal? Only in pretty extreme circumstances are three wells really being monetized efficiently, both from the bar team perspective and the restaurant’s. You have to be pretty consistently busy for hours upon hours, which if you are – congratulations!
If you only have room for one well in your establishment, it needs to be extremely efficient to preserve the integrity of service at the bar as well as send out drinks to your dining room.
Equipment Size
Something to consider is the size of equipment, especially in terms of the specs that determine what you can squeeze into a particular footprint.
The majority of all bar equipment is sized on 6” increments, and you can specify your needs based on 6” sizes. The smallest well in that category would be 12” on up to about 48”, with a sweet spot somewhere in the 36” range.
If your program is cocktail heavy, it’s a great idea to plan for your ice well to house a couple different types of ice. For instance, an ice well with 24” dedicated to the industry standard Kold-Draft ice cube (1”x1”x1.25”) and one side dedicated to pebble/nugget ice developed by Scotsman (initially for Sonic) taking up about 12”.
If you really want to get high-end, you could carve out some space in the well for some fancy “shaking” ice, which is generally house-made in a freezer dedicated to ice production. These are typically 2”x2” cubes made with filtered water in silicon molds from somewhere like Cocktail Kingdom.
Once you’ve got an appropriate-sized ice well, consider if you want to use Kold-Draft ice – the highly coveted industry standard of cocktail ice due to its density and clarity. If the answer is yes, you have three options in terms of how the machine is cooled.
You can choose air cooled if ‘breathable’ air space is not an issue, water cooled if where the machine is set is tight and without a lot of cool air in its air space, or remote air-cooled, which is far and away the most successful I have seen these machines operate.
A water-cooled well uses a large amount of water. It’s a great option if water use isn’t an issue, like if you have your own well water supply – but that’s not very likely.
The air-cooled Kold-Draft machine (not remote cooled) is notoriously finicky when it comes to the successful production of the perfect Kold-Draft cube. If you ask a bar manager who has worked with one of these air-cooled machines for a while – particularly if it’s kind of jammed into a tight space that doesn’t really have the proper air circulation it should – they have likely become experts at deciphering the LED code panel and have performed some emergency maintenance on the machine a time or two for sure. These codes generally indicate that the machine is operating without enough HVAC cooled and filtered breathable airspace for it to operate properly.
In the multiple establishments I’ve worked at that used Kold-Draft, I became a Kold-Draft ninja, surgically slaughtering each and every LED error code as soon as it was illuminated.
Whether the ice well is holding Kold-Draft or Scotsman nuggets, remote air-cooled is probably the best way to go. This puts the condenser on the roof of the building, giving the machine all the breathable air it could possibly need, completely unobstructed. It allows the machine to operate efficiently and effectively without strain, which would create more wear and tear on the unit and ultimately produce an inferior ice cube or no ice cube at all.
Station Components
Now that ice is out of the way, let’s talk about which beverages will be prepared at the bar – both for guests at the bar and service bar. The ideal would be to never have to take a step and remain in the same position for the duration of the shift. While that’s not likely to be the case, it can be used as an overall guiding principle to strive for. Of course, exceptions will undoubtedly have to be made to squeeze in everything that your beverage program will need to quickly and consistently execute your menu.
Consider the following for each station:
•Ice Well
•Speed Rack
•Dump Sink
•Trash Can
•Freezer
•Drink Rail + Glass/Tin Rinser
Since the specs on this equipment are built around 6” increments, you can plan the size of your station accordingly. For instance, use a 36” ice well with a double-tiered speed rack for liquor bottles as a starting point. A 12” dump sink to the right of the well is a great addition. Next to that, a 12” “Slim Jim”–style trash can.
On the other side of the ice well, the left side, consider placing a low-boy single-door 24” freezer that will not only place frozen glasses and artisanal ice next to where they are ultimately needed, but will also allow for a worktop where a cutting board for garnishes and tools and such can be placed. If this is going to be a service well, have a dot matrix/impact-style printer close by and a roughly 24” sized space for service drinks for the dining room.
Lastly, the drink rails should be mounted underneath the bar at least spanning the length of the ice well. Even better, have them span the length of the cocktail station or the length of the whole bar.
The drink rails will allow the bartender to build cocktails on a surface intended for heavy use, i.e., stainless steel, and will not gobble up valuable real estate on the bar top.
The rinser should be mounted on the right-hand side of the ice well. The placement of the dump sink on the right and trash can next to it (also on the right side) is a best practice.
Since the majority of individuals are right-handed, from a design perspective in terms of a bar with cocktails in mind, this is a pretty good guide for most programs. However, should your needs be for a left-handed individual, by all means flip this plan so the freezer is on the right of the ice well and the rinser, dump sink and trash can are mounted on the left-hand side instead.
Beer
Be sure to make room for beer and wine. How many, if any, taps are you looking to employ as part of your beverage program? If it’s only a few, like two to four, then a direct-draw system is likely your best bet. A direct-draw system is also referred to a as a kegerator and is essentially a self-contained cooler that houses the kegs. A short line is then run from the inside of the keg box to the taps and voila – beer.
If you’re looking to have a decent number of taps, say six to 12, then a long-draw system should be considered. In this system, the kegs are stored in a cold room/walk-in and lines are run to the bar, usually in conjunction with a glycol cooling line snaking around the lines to ensure the beer temp stays consistent from keg to tap. This type of system will generally allow you to place your taps in a wider variety of easily accessible places without the necessity of the keg box sitting underneath the taps, thus taking up valuable real estate behind the bar.
Another benefit of the cold room long-draw system is that in general, it’s possible to add a larger number of ½-barrel kegs into your inventory of beers, which has a decent impact on the overall beer cost. That’s because 1/2 barrel-sized kegs allow for much better pricing in your Cost of Goods Sold category, thus shrinking that number in your bottom line.
The downside of this kind of system, though, is the length of the lines can be a hinderance to maximizing your profits, and this will rear its head anytime you need to switch a keg out with a different SKU or if you just need to clean the lines. Depending on the length of line, there could be several pints of beer sitting in them at any one time.
If your program warrants the use of both direct draw and long draw, you will likely need to think about two different gas systems, one for the cold room and one for the kegerator(s). The kegerators also tend to build on 6” increments, where the smallest ones I’ve seen are 24” and the larger ones are around 84-90”.
Wine
If wine is going to be a focus of your beverage program, consider employing temperature-controlled wine – even it’s only a smallish portion of the overall beverage program. Many manufactures today, like Glastender, Perlick and Micro Matic, offer dual-zone coolers that can employ a combination of different temperatures to ensure that your wine is stored and served at the right temp. These coolers also allow for a good space to store packaged beer and cider.
Generally, there are roughly three different loosely classified temps: Beer + Bubbly (wine & cider): 35-45°, White + Skin Contact (rosé & orange) Wine: 45-55° and Red Wine: 55-65°. Try to have at least one 24” section dedicated to white and skin contact wine temp and one 24” section dedicated to red wine temp for all of your By the Glass (BTG).
The great thing about these dual-zone coolers is that you can use them to maximize limited space. Since most coolers are set to be in the 35-45° range, it’s a little easier to source your BTG bubbly and packaged beer cooler that fits your size requirements.
Hand Sink and Dishwasher
The last piece of the puzzle is the hand sink and the dishwasher. The hand sink will likely fit in the 12” size category. As far as the dishwasher, I have worked with both a three-compartment drop sink and a mechanical dishwasher with a 2-minute wash cycle.
For the majority of everyone and everyplace I’ve worked at, the mechanical dishwasher makes the most sense. The difference in size is somewhat of a factor, however. The standard undercounter dishwasher is about 24” in width, and the standard three-compartment drop sink with three 12” sinks and two 12” drainboards brings it to a grand total of 60” (5 feet).
Not everyone has that kind of space behind the bar, but if you do, and the silence of the handwash and the efficiency of the small amount of water used makes sense for your program, then, by all means, it is the way to go for you. For the rest of us, a mechanical, high-temperature, undercounter dishwasher is what we are after.
When it comes to the plumbing for all this equipment, I strongly encourage you to consider using floor sinks. Essentially these are square drains in the floor that have debris strainers fitted in them, and all the plumbing can be routed above grade to those floor sinks. This system allows for relatively easy movement of all the modular equipment – say in the event that you now have a lead bartender that happens to be left-handed.
Electrical Power
Power – and access to it – has always been an important part of bar design. However, it seems that it’s even more important in this age of the ever-impending dying device. For your guests, please, please, provide several outlets on the patron side of the bar for them to recharge.
For the bar side, I’ve certainly tripped my fair share of breakers while using a piece of equipment that draws a lot of amps, and the circuit that it’s plugged into is usually wired in with several other pieces of equipment as well. To keep from tripping breakers, consider a few 20-40-amp dedicated circuits behind the bar for all the prep that needs to be executed.
Bar Top
There’s a pretty good-sized bar top out there, and we all know it when we sit at it. That number in terms of width seems to be in the 24” range. This 2-foot range allows for the patron to have enough space to dine, and there’s enough room for the bartender to do what needs to be done on their side of the equation. It’s a nice round number based on those 6” increments that just works.
Of course, there are always a ton of exceptions to everything I’ve stated here, but in my experience, these measurements and standards are quite tried and true and will be a good place to start as you consider how to maximize the efficiency of your space behind the bar.
Cole Younger Just is co-owner of Atlanta- based Just Walk Consulting, where recent clients have included Full Commission and Old Fourth Distillery. He was previously beverage director at Bellina Alimentari, The Cockentrice and Last Word. He’s originally from the New Orleans area, but has called Atlanta home since 1996.
