Bar Equipment Planner with Quantities and Costs

Knowing what a bar needs is the easy half. The questions that decide your opening budget are how many of each, and what it costs you, and both depend on your seats, your stations and your menu. This workbook answers them from your own numbers. Updated September 2026.

66 items in seven groups, with quantities calculated from your bar rather than copied off a list
Three quote columns per line, so the budget is built on your supplier prices
Splits opening-night spend from what can wait until the first menu change

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Petpooja presents

Bar Equipment Planner

For Bars, Pubs & Lounges in India

Items · seven groups

Excel · 5 sheets

What's Inside

Five sheets, and the second one does the arithmetic

Instructions

How the file works, what the colours mean, and the two Indian rules to settle before you place an order. One sheet, read it once.

Bar Profile

Seats, service stations, menu style, your busiest evening. Plus the glass mix and the three assumptions every quantity rests on, all visible and all editable.

Equipment List

All 66 items across tools, glassware, ice and cold, prep, surfaces, cleaning and billing. Each line carries the spec to insist on, a calculated quantity, three quote columns and a day-one or later flag, with six blank rows at the end for anything the list does not carry.

Before You Buy

The legal metrology rule on serving measures, the food safety part that reaches behind the counter, and ten questions to put to a supplier in writing before you pay.

Budget Summary

Totals by group, opening night against later, each group's share of the spend, and a count of every line you have given a quantity but not yet priced.

And it prints as your enquiry

Not a sixth sheet: print the Equipment List and it doubles as the enquiry you send a supplier, with item, specification and quantity set out and three columns waiting for their price.

Count what leaves the shelf with Petpooja POS

Petpooja POS deducts stock item by item as you bill, sends low-stock alerts, and gives you day-end inventory reports, part of 80+ business reports covering sales, staff actions and inventory consumption.

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Why This Matters

Bars rarely get the list wrong. They get the quantity and the order wrong

A good bar equipment list, ours included, will tell you a bar needs a shaker, a jigger and an ice machine. What a list cannot tell you is how many shakers, how many glasses, or what any of it should cost you, because all three depend on a bar the writer has never seen.

That gap is where the money goes. Two shakers for a single station is right; two for a three-station bar means a bartender waiting on a colleague at the busiest hour. A hundred glasses sounds generous until you notice that at any moment during service a glass is in one of three places: on a table, in the wash, or on the shelf. So one set per seat leaves the shelf empty while the first round is still being drunk.

This file starts from your bar instead. You enter seats, stations and menu style once, and every quantity follows from that. The hand tools scale with stations, because that is what decides how many bartenders are reaching for the same strainer. The glassware scales with seats and with your own menu split, because glassware is the one group you genuinely cannot copy from another bar.

On prices, this workbook does something unusual: it ships with none. Indian bar equipment prices are quoted city by city and season by season, and most published figures come from suppliers selling the equipment. A price band copied from one of those would be wrong for most readers and stale for the rest. So the file gives you three quote columns per line and takes the lowest. What you get from us is the list, the quantity method, the specification to insist on and the arithmetic, and those do not go stale.

The specification matters more than the brand. The same shaker sells at four prices and the gap is usually build quality: food-grade stainless rather than a plated finish that chips into drinks, commercial weight that survives being dropped, no seams on anything holding liquid. Ask three suppliers to quote against the same written spec and the comparison means something. Ask them to quote on "a shaker" and it does not.

Two groups get underbought almost every time, and both cost you every evening rather than once. Ice is the first: ice is an ingredient, a bottle cooler does not make it, and a bar that opens without a machine ends up sending a runner out twice a night through the monsoon. Wash capacity is the second, and it is the line that gets cut when the budget tightens, which is awkward, because Schedule 4 of the licensing regulations sets a floor underneath it that has nothing to do with your budget.

That is the other thing an imported list will not carry. Two Indian rules reach the kit behind your counter: your peg measure is a legal instrument and needs verification before use, and your bar is a food service establishment whose wash setup, storage and staff hygiene are inspectable on the same terms as a kitchen's. Both are cheap to settle before opening. Neither is cheap during an inspection. Before any of it, a bar that serves liquor needs its state excise licence, and some states prohibit or tightly restrict liquor sales altogether; our bar and brewery licensing guide covers the permissions side, and the guide to opening a bar in India sets out the order the spending sits in.

Sample Preview

What the file works out for a 40-seat bar with one station

Here's a preview of what you'll get inside:

You enter: 40 seats, 1 service station, a mixed drinks menu, 120 covers on your busiest evening at 2.5 drinks a guest

Hand tools: 2 shakers, 4 jiggers, 3 bar spoons, 2 Hawthorne strainers, scaled to the station, with spares built into the items that bend or vanish

Glassware: 135 glasses across six shapes, split by your own menu mix, including the breakage buffer. Change the mix and every shape moves

Ice: 60 kg on that evening, so the machine is sized against your busiest night rather than an average one

The budget then says: what has to be paid for before you can serve a drink, what can follow the first menu review, and how many lines you still have not priced

... plus the specification to insist on for every line, the two Indian rules in full, and ten questions to put to a supplier in writing. Every figure above moves when you change the profile. None of them is a benchmark you are stuck with.

Key Numbers

Three things worth knowing before you order

₹2,000–10,000

The fine for using an unverified measure in trade, on a first offence. A second offence can bring imprisonment of up to a year and a fine on top. A jigger ordered online does not arrive stamped.

Source: Legal Metrology Act, 2009, sections 24 and 33, subject to periodic revision under the Jan Vishwas Acts

Part V

The part of Schedule 4 that covers catering and food service establishments and names snack bars directly. It sets the floor for your wash setup, and it applies on top of the general requirements rather than instead of them.

Source: Schedule 4, Food Safety and Standards (Licensing and Registration) Regulations, 2011

Three

Places a glass sits during service: on a table, in the wash, or on the shelf. Stock one set per seat and the shelf is empty while the first round is still being drunk. The file uses this to size every shape.

Source: the quantity method built into the workbook

Common Mistakes

7 buying mistakes that show up on opening night

Buying the showpiece shaker before the ice machine

Order is what separates a bar that opens cleanly from one that does not. Everything in the day-one column stops service if it is missing. Everything else either improves the drink and the look or protects the margin once you are trading, and can follow.

Treating a bottle cooler as ice storage

A cooler holds what you are selling at serving temperature. It does not make ice. Ice is an ingredient and you use far more of it than you expect, so bagged ice bought daily turns into a running cost nobody budgeted and a hygiene question nobody can answer.

Ordering a jigger without asking whether it can be stamped

A measure that decides the quantity you sell has to be verified before it is put into use. Suppliers will not raise this with you, and a jigger bundled with a bar counter arrives no more stamped than one bought online.

One sink behind the bar

The regulations expect sinks with a draining board, detergent and hot water for utensils, crockery and cutlery, and a separate place for washing pots and pans, with separate sinks for raw food and equipment where necessary. Wash capacity also decides how many guests you can actually serve, which is why cutting it to save money costs revenue first.

One glass set per seat

It looks like enough on a spreadsheet and empties the shelf during the first round. Glass is a consumable, not a fixed asset, and breakage on a busy Saturday is normal rather than exceptional.

Comparing three quotes that describe three different things

Plated finish against food-grade stainless, domestic weight against commercial, GST included against GST extra. Without a written specification attached to the enquiry, the cheapest quote is usually the cheapest item, and you find out in the second month.

Budgeting the equipment and forgetting what counts it

A bar loses stock in ways a kitchen does not. An over-pour of 10 ml on every peg disappears silently, and by the monthly count the bottle figure and the sales figure no longer agree. That is inventory shrinkage, and it is the reason bars run an inventory audit far more often than restaurants do. Our guide to how liquor goes missing behind a bar is worth reading alongside this, and the inventory audit checklist covers the physical count.

Comparison

A plain equipment list vs this planner

Aspect	A list you copy off the internet	With this planner
What to buy	Covered, usually well	Covered, in seven groups by where it sits during service
How many of each	Not answered, or one number for every bar	Calculated from your seats, stations and menu
What it costs	A band from last year, or from a supplier	Your own three quotes per line, lowest taken automatically
Glassware	A round number	Split by your menu mix, with rotations and breakage built in
Buying order	Rarely mentioned	Day one against later, totalled separately
Indian rules	Absent from imported lists	Legal metrology on measures, Schedule 4 Part V on the wash setup
Talking to suppliers	You write the enquiry yourself	The sheet prints as the enquiry, with the spec attached

Swipe the table sideways to see the full comparison.

Price your bar from your own quotes

Download the free planner and let it work out how many of each, before you call a supplier.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to equip a bar in India?

Honestly, nobody can tell you that from a web page, and a figure that claims to is usually a supplier's or out of date. It moves with your city, your seat count, how much of the order one supplier gets, and whether you buy commercial weight or domestic. What we can give you is the method: this planner lists every item, works out how many of each your bar needs, and gives you three columns to enter real quotes so the total is yours rather than someone else's. If you are sizing the wider opening budget, the break-even calculator is the next step.

Does a jigger or peg measure need government stamping in India?

If the measure decides the quantity you sell, yes. Section 24 of the Legal Metrology Act, 2009 requires a weight or measure to be verified before it is put into use, and verification and stamping is arranged through your state legal metrology department. Section 33 sets the penalty for using an unverified one: a fine of not less than ₹2,000 and up to ₹10,000 for a first offence, with imprisonment of up to a year possible on a second. The amounts are as restated in the Delhi Legal Metrology department's published penalties table, and neither section was touched by either of the Jan Vishwas decriminalisation Acts, so both still stand, although both Acts also raise fines by ten per cent of the minimum every three years, so confirm the current figure. Compounding is available instead of court, but section 48 was replaced from 1 May 2026 and the sum is now whatever the rules prescribe, capped at the maximum fine, so ask your state department rather than trusting an older rate card. A jigger ordered online does not arrive stamped, so ask the supplier in writing whether the measures are verifiable before you pay. This is general guidance and not legal advice.

How many glasses should a new bar stock?

More than one set per seat. At any moment during service a glass is on a table, in the wash, or on the shelf, so a single set leaves you empty while the first round is still going. The planner defaults to three sets per seat plus a breakage buffer, splits that across six shapes using your own menu mix, and lets you change every one of those numbers. A bar pouring mostly beer and highballs needs nothing like the range a cocktail bar carries.

Which bar equipment has to be there on opening night?

Anything that stops service if it is missing: the shaker, jigger, bar spoon, strainer and muddler; glassware for every drink on the menu; the ice machine and bottle cooler; bar mats, speed rail and dump sink; the glass wash setup and sanitiser; and the POS terminal with a bill printer. Eight lines are flagged Later: the fine mesh strainer, the rimmer, the ice bucket for table service, the powered juicer, the blender, the back bar lighting, the weighing scale for stock counts and the CCTV. The shelving itself is a day-one line, because the bottles need somewhere to go on opening night, and the planner tells you to buy only the glass shapes your opening menu actually uses. The planner flags every line as day one or later and totals the two separately.

Do food safety rules apply behind the bar, or only in the kitchen?

Behind the bar too. Part V of Schedule 4 of the licensing regulations covers catering and food service establishments and names snack bars directly, and it applies on top of the general requirements rather than instead of them. In practice that means your wash setup, your storage and your staff hygiene are inspectable on the same terms as the kitchen's, and Part V also asks for a systematic cleaning schedule and instructions, saying what is cleaned, how often and with what, rather than just clean equipment. The bar inventory guide covers the stock side of running the bar once you are open. This is general guidance on the hygiene requirements and not legal advice; your licensing authority is the one to confirm what applies to your premises.

About Petpooja

Petpooja is India's leading SME business software suite, trusted by 1,50,000+ businesses across restaurants, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and more. From billing and payroll to task management and procurement, Petpooja helps Indian businesses run better, every day.

Know what was poured against what was sold

Petpooja POS deducts stock item by item as you bill, sends low-stock alerts and produces day-end inventory reports, so the gap between the bottle and the till shows up the same week rather than at the month's count.

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