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Run out of ice at a party and everyone seems to understand. You might even get one of your guests to make a quick trip to the nearest convenience store to get you a bag or two. But run out of drinks and you just might look like a bad host. All you had to do was some simple math and you might not have had a problem. Jessie-Sierra Ross, author of “Seasons Around the Table: Effortless Entertaining with Floral Tablescapes & Seasonal Recipes,” shared her easy solution exclusively with Chowhound: “Just take the number of guests x the length of the party x 2 drinks per hour.”
Knowing how much you should buy of anything you need for a party can be nerve-wracking. Ina Garten knows how much to feed a crowd, so her tips for serving protein (4 to 8 ounces per person) and pasta (1 to 2 cups per guest) are helpful. Ross, who shares recipes and entertaining tips on her blog Straight to the Hips, Baby and on Instagram, explains that the formula for drinks is not a hard and fast rule. “It works by assuming an average consumption and it’s a practical way to figure out how much to stock in your fridge,” she said. Other factors that could impact how much you end up serving include the time of day and how much alcohol you plan to serve.
You need a little more math to figure out the alcohol
Using Jessie-Sierra Ross’ formula, if you have 20 guests at your home for four hours and you assume two drinks each per hour, you’ll need 160 drinks. But that estimate is the total for all drinks, including non-alcoholic beverages. Not everyone agrees how to best break down those 160 drinks. For example, one caterer suggests serving 30% spirits, 30% wine, 30% beer, and 10% soft drinks, while another suggests 50% wine, 30% beer, and 20% spirits.
The exact ratio will depend, as Ross suggests, on your guests’ preferences. You should have a general idea of which friends are wine versus beer drinkers and who likes to slowly sip whiskey before switching to wine. To know how many bottles of wine to have on hand, keep in mind that there are approximately five glasses in a 750-milliliter bottle. If you’re serving hard liquor, each portion is approximately 1.5 ounces, so there should be 17 servings in each 750-milliliter bottle.
Not knowing how much to buy and serve is one of the mistakes you want to avoid when making a dinner party. Thankfully, all you need is a little knowledge of your friends’ preferences and a calculator to figure it all out.
