Bar Gear & Equipment

Cocktail Tools

The working kit behind the bar. This is the gear that touches every drink, so durability and accuracy matter more than anything else.

Shakers, mixing glasses and strainers

Shakers come as two-piece tins, three-piece cobblers or Boston sets with a glass half. Two-piece tins are the usual choice in high-volume bars: they seal reliably, chill fast and separate without a fight. Cobblers are slower to open when cold but include a built-in strainer. Mixing glasses matter for stirred drinks — look at the base weight and the pour spout, since a glass that wobbles or dribbles wastes product. On strainers, a Hawthorne with a tight spring handles shaken drinks, a julep suits stirred service, and a fine-mesh cone is what keeps citrus pulp and ice shards out of a coupe.

Jiggers and measuring

Measuring is the single most cost-relevant piece of equipment in the building. Free pouring drifts, and drift always runs generous. Choose jiggers with interior graduations you can read in low light, and make sure your set covers the fractions your specs actually use. If your recipes call for a quarter ounce or a barspoon of something expensive, own the tool that measures it. Once your team measures consistently, the Pour Cost Calculator starts reflecting reality instead of theory.

Bar spoons, muddlers and pour spouts

A bar spoon needs enough length for your tallest mixing vessel and a weighted end that lets it spin in the glass rather than in your fingers. Muddlers should be food-safe, easy to sanitise and blunt enough to press herbs without shredding them. Speed pourers are worth standardising across your well: matched spouts pour at a predictable rate, which makes count pours consistent and inventory variance easier to interpret when you review liquor cost each period.

We only list equipment we can stand behind, so this list stays short and grows as products are reviewed and approved. In the meantime, the buying guidance above applies to whichever brand you choose.

Cocktail Tools for Better Home & Professional Bars

A Bar Above offers professional-quality cocktail tools and resources designed for bartenders, cocktail enthusiasts, and anyone serious about making better drinks.

Premium Cocktail Gear

Specialist and presentation equipment. This category earns its place when it supports a drink you can charge more for — otherwise it is decoration with a cost attached.

Smoking and specialty tools

Cocktail smokers, torches, clarification and infusion kit and similar tools add a technique to your menu rather than a garnish. Before buying, think about service time: anything that adds thirty seconds per drink needs either a price that covers it or a place on a low-volume section of the menu. Check what consumables the tool needs, how it is cleaned, and whether your venue's rules on open flame allow it.

Glassware and presentation

Premium glassware changes how a drink is received, and it also changes your breakage line. Ask about rim durability, whether the glass is rated for commercial dishwashers, and how easily you can reorder the same shape in two years. Fill volume matters too: a glass larger than your spec quietly pushes bartenders to over-pour. Garnish and presentation tools — peelers, channel knives, dehydrated fruit storage, picks — are cheap individually but belong in your costings, which is why the cocktail cost tool includes a garnish line.

We only list equipment we can stand behind, so this list stays short and grows as products are reviewed and approved. In the meantime, the buying guidance above applies to whichever brand you choose.

Commercial Bar Equipment

The fixed infrastructure. These are the largest line items in a bar build and the hardest to change later, so capacity and serviceability outrank price.

Ice and refrigeration

Ice is an ingredient, and it is the one most bars underestimate. Size a machine against your busiest service, not your average day, and account for the ice your shaken drinks consume as well as what goes in the glass. Consider ice type — cube, nugget, crushed — against your drink list, and confirm water filtration and cleaning requirements, because scale is the usual reason a machine dies early. On refrigeration, look at bottle-cooler capacity, whether the unit holds temperature with doors opening constantly, and how easily a technician can get to the compressor. Both categories carry real running costs, which belong in the fixed-cost side of your Bar Break-Even Calculator.

Stations, storage and speed rails

A well-designed station is a labour saving. The goal is that a bartender can make your ten most-sold drinks without stepping away from their position: well spirits in the speed rail in a fixed order, ice within reach, garnish tray and tools in the same place on every shift. Stainless steel work surfaces, drainage you can actually clean and shelving rated for the weight of full cases are the basics. When layout works, each bartender covers more guests per hour — the input the Bar Staffing Calculator is most sensitive to.

Commercial glassware and volume equipment

For high-volume and event service, buy for replacement and stacking rather than delicacy: consistent shapes, compatible racks, and stock depth that survives a weekend. Large-format containers, dispensers and batching vessels are worth having if you pre-batch — pair them with the Batch Cocktail Calculator so your container sizes match the yields you are actually scaling to.

We only list equipment we can stand behind, so this list stays short and grows as products are reviewed and approved. In the meantime, the buying guidance above applies to whichever brand you choose.

Bar Management Technology

Point-of-sale, restaurant management software and inventory tools are what turn a shift into data you can read afterwards. A POS captures every item sold and by whom, which is the record you need to price a menu on real sales mix rather than memory. Inventory and operational software closes the loop: counted stock against rung sales is how variance becomes visible instead of assumed.

When comparing platforms, weigh total cost (software, hardware, installation and payment processing), fit to your service style, support hours, integrations with your accounting and payroll, and whether you can export your own sales history. Our guide to POS software for bars walks through those questions in detail. Sales data from whichever system you choose also feeds straight into the Menu Pricing Calculator.