Bar Accessories

A jigger, a pourer on every spirit bottle, a shaker, a strainer, a bar spoon, a mat, an ice scoop and enough glassware for the busiest hour plus a wash cycle. Everything else can wait until you know what the drinks list actually needs.

The one people under-buy is glassware. Running out mid-service means washing in the middle of a rush, which is slower and breaks more glasses than simply owning more. See beer glasses and wine glasses for the volume lines.

Jiggers, if you care about cost of goods. Free pouring is faster in trained hands and is legal, but the variance across a team is usually enough to notice on a stocktake, and it makes a cocktail list taste different depending on who is on.

A dual-sided cocktail jigger covers most measures. Hold more than one, because they get knocked into the sink.

Stainless steel for anything measuring or mixing. 304 stainless steel is the food-safety grade used in Australian commercial kitchens and it handles citrus acid, which is what pits cheaper metal.

Rubber and silicone for mats and grips because they stay put on a wet surface. Plastic for anything a customer might take outside, which is where plastic glasses earn their place.

Give every glass a place to land. Most breakage happens when a glass is put down on a crowded wet bench rather than into a rack, so the fix is more rack space and more mats, not more care.

Keep hot and cold apart as well. Glass that has come out of a glasswasher hot and goes straight onto ice is the other common breakage, and a short rest on a rack solves it.

Shakers, jiggers, spoons and strainers generally do and come out better for it. Pourers need the spout checked by hand because sugar residue builds inside and a machine cycle does not always clear it.

Mats are usually washed by hand or hosed and left to drain. Check the individual product page before putting anything rubber through a high-temperature cycle.

Jiggers, pourers and mats are consumables — budget on replacing them rather than repairing them. Shakers and strainers last years if they are stainless and not dropped on concrete.

Keep spares of the cheap items on the shelf. A bar that is down to one working pourer starts free pouring, and that costs more than a box of pourers.

Check pads or a terminal, a waiter's friend behind the bar as well as on the floor, and somewhere to hold the menu. Commercial check pads and the waiter's friend range cover that.

Ice handling is worth planning properly too — a dedicated scoop that lives in the ice well and never touches a glass rim is both faster and the correct way to do it.