Calculators
Party & servings calculator
Pick a cocktail, tell us how many guests, and get exact quantities, bottle counts and a printable shopping list.
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How this works
Almost every party runs out of one thing and over-buys another. The arithmetic is not hard, but it is easy to get wrong by eye, because the quantities that matter — ice, citrus, glassware — are not the ones people think about when they are buying spirits.
How many drinks people actually have
A reasonable planning figure is two drinks in the first hour and one an hour after that. For a four-hour evening that is five drinks a head, and you should buy for a little more than you expect rather than a little less.
That figure is for cocktails at normal strength. If you are serving spritzes or other low-alcohol drinks people will have more of them, and if you are serving Negronis they will have fewer.
Ice is the thing people underestimate
Plan for around a kilogram of ice per person for an evening. That sounds absurd until you remember that every drink uses ice twice — once to chill and dilute it, and once in the glass — and that ice sitting in a bucket melts whether anyone is drinking or not.
Running out of ice ends cocktail service completely. Running out of one spirit just changes what people drink.
Citrus and glassware
A lime yields roughly 25 to 30ml of juice and a lemon roughly 40 to 45ml, so a drink with 25ml of lime in it is close to one lime per drink. Buy more than the arithmetic says: some fruit is dry, and juicing to order takes longer than you think.
Count glasses at about 1.5 per person rather than one. People put drinks down and lose them, and washing up mid-party is a way to miss your own party.
A worked example: twenty guests, four hours
- Five drinks a head × 20 guests = 100 drinks.
- At 50ml of spirit per drink that is 5,000ml — seven 700ml bottles, so buy eight.
- Ice: roughly 20kg. Most people buy a quarter of this.
- Limes, if every drink takes 25ml: around 100 limes' worth of juice, so juice ahead or pick drinks that do not all need citrus.
- Glasses: 30, or hire them.
What it does not account for
- Who is driving, who is not drinking, and how many people arrive late — all of which move the total more than any rule of thumb.
- Whether you are serving one drink or a menu. A single batched cocktail is far easier to buy for than four different ones.
- Food. People drink noticeably less when there is something to eat.
- Bottle sizes, which vary by country and by product — check the label rather than assuming 700ml.