How Batching Can Help Build Your Bar Business

In the modern bartending landscape where the stakes are high, batching cocktails — mixing, diluting, and chilling drinks ahead of time — might seem like cutting corners to guests expecting to belly up to the bar and get the full drink-making experience. But smart batched-cocktail programs can be extremely useful not only for streamlining service and ensuring consistency, but also for running a more efficient, and profitable, bar. And it can work for operators big and small, from high volume cocktail lounges to restaurants with extensive beverage programs. 

Full Book spoke with two industry pros on their strategies for batching and why it’s so effective. At the beloved Dante in New York City, batching is the key to better drinks and more attentive service. And at newcomer Hogwash in Fort Myers, higher volume batching preserves quality in a fast-paced environment. 

(As told to Joanna Sciarrino.)

Dante, New York City

At Dante, we pride ourselves on having an extensive cocktail list. But having that kind of range and that many offerings is really only possible if you batch. There are a number of reasons why we batch, the biggest being speed, efficiency, and consistency. If you have cocktails that require five, six, or seven pick-ups, there's a greater margin of error in making that drink in the moment versus just picking up two ingredients, one that’s batched beforehand with maybe nine ingredients in it and then using one fresh ingredient, like lime juice or lemon juice. This way also takes less time and consolidates space in your bar — rather than having zillions of ingredients everywhere, you just have a few batched bottles in your well.

Another reason that might not necessarily apply to every operator is that it makes dinner service smoother. We’re a bar, but we're also a restaurant. So our bartenders are also explaining the menu, taking orders, serving food, and spending a lot of time with our guests. For a higher volume restaurant like ours, batching is really essential to helping us pay better attention to our guests. 

It also reduces labor costs. Because we have an extensive cocktail menu, we can only fit so many people behind the bar. If we didn't batch and we had to pour things individually and refill everything individually, we would need more personnel to help us behind the bar. Instead, we have one person downstairs who's putting all the ingredients together in precise measurements. And with a well-trained bar team, they can execute it properly. Of course bartenders need to know how to build the drinks, so you have to invest in the training. But compared to 15 years ago, bartenders today know the language of batching. 

When you have a batch program, I think a lot of people think that it applies to the entire menu, but we only batch certain drinks, when it makes sense for quality and taste. We batch all of our Martinis because we believe that a Martini tastes much better when it comes directly from the freezer, where it can get colder (and more viscous) than if you were to just stir it over ice. Batching our Martinis also allows us to use less ice. Instead of using 10 or 15 cubes to make one or two Martinis and then dumping them out, we use a precise amount of water for dilution in the batches. For our spritzes, rather than relying on sparkling wine for effervescence, we mix all of those ingredients together and then carbonate them, which makes for a bubblier cocktail. 

For those drinks, batching works better. But for other cocktails, it makes more sense to make them to order. For the Garibaldi, for example, we juice the orange à la minute because we know that it's going to taste better that way. We're not going to sacrifice the quality for speed on those kinds of cocktails because to get the fluffy juice, you have to do it all in the moment. 

Some guests have a tough time understanding why we batch cocktails and think of it as cutting corners. They think that all the magic should happen behind the bar, from the bartender. But to have a good bar program, it starts many layers before a guest gets to the bar. It starts with the prep room. People don't think of it in terms of the kitchen, but the bar is just kind of executing how an efficient kitchen functions. And a kitchen has a mise en place, where all the different components to a dish are prepped and ready to go. To have a really good cocktail program that's very diverse and extensive and that will maintain consistency and volume, you need a program that preps all these things in advance. 

Hogwash, Fort Myers, Florida

Hogwash is a new specialty cocktail concept in Fort Myers. With a full cocktail list of classics and a new team, batching was really the right option to make things as speedy, efficient, and consistent as possible, especially for the volume that they'll do. Batching gives you the quality of a craft cocktail that people are looking for in a faster paced environment. 

Beyond the speed, efficiency, and consistency that it offers, one of the reasons we love batching is that when the pick-up for a drink is only two bottles instead of four or five, it really cuts down on time, but it also mitigates errors — the fewer movements you have to make behind the bar, the fewer mistakes you’ll make, and that saves money. 

From a profitability point of view, batching can be a great tool for everyone because you can do your ordering a little differently. The bigger the bottles you buy, the lower the price. And if you’re mostly handling batched drinks decanted into smaller bottles versus straight spirits, you can opt for more 1.75-liter bottles to do your batching at a lower price point versus the 750-milileter bottles you’d typically have behind the bar.

Labor-wise, batching also makes sense. With some clever recipe developing, you can get the specs for a batch down to the bottle without having to painstakingly measure things out. So for prep, all you have to do is gather your bottles and everything you need and you can make 200 drinks in three minutes. Sure, milk punches and other more involved drinks take more time to prepare, but for a program like Hogwash, it works really well. 

Batching is also a great way to jumpstart a bar program where training can fill in the rest. You can hire enthusiastic bartenders who can learn the batch cocktails quickly without necessarily having a Rolodex of cocktails in their head, and they can jump in and get the program off the ground faster. And then you invest in continued training to build up skills and knowledge. 

For guests who care about the experience of seeing a bartender make their drink, you’re not really losing much. You're still going to see your bartender shake it or mix it and serve it to you. The only difference is guests can actually get a super fancy cocktail in a reasonable amount of time instead of 20 minutes. And for the old-school purists who might think you're not really doing it like they are — you are. You just get to do a lot faster, serve more people, and make more money as a result. Batching is just doing it smarter, not harder.