Episode 016

Cocktail Batching Spreadsheets

This is where I show off some of my magic. I’m going to take you through this step-by-step. Before you make your spreadsheet, you need to establish a few things:

1. The cocktail recipe, broken down by ingredient.
2. The number of people who are expected to attend and take part in the cocktail drinking
3. The number of drinks per person (and here it’s very important to consider how people are getting to your event and how they’ll get home safely)
4. And finally, any budgetary constraints. If there’s a ceiling on your price, you need to establish that right off the bat.

Once you’ve got that down, it’s time to start plugging in numbers.

First, input all your ingredients and their corresponding amounts in your cocktail recipe. Then multiply that entire recipe by the number of drinks you need to serve (guest x drinks per person).

Next, convert your oz to ml (oz x 29.5735), and divide that number by 750 (or 1750 if you’re purchasing handles) to get the number of bottles you need.

Round that up to the next bottle if you want to be conservative, and then input your cost per unit. All you need to do to get your total cost is to multiply your cost/unit by total units needed. And Voila! You’ve got your whole recipe budgeted out and broken down by ingredient.