How To Prepare Your Bar For St Patrick’s Day | Checklist

March can be a sneaky old month, and I don’t say that because the weather starts to change, or because the winter sports seasons start to ramp up. I say it because of a significant date in the hospitality calendar that has a tendency to creep up on you if you aren’t fully prepared.

I’m talking, of course, about St Patrick’s Day.

It promotes a general feeling of celebration and (ahem) responsible consumption of as much alcohol one can consume whilst still being within the realms of responsibility.

It also has the ability to unite the general public with its power to make everyone forget that they don’t particularly like Guinness despite there being a pint of the stuff getting warm in their hand for most of the night.

This can be a blessing (if you’re prepared for the rush), or a curse (if you’re not). 

So, how can your venue be fully prepared for St Patrick’s Day?

• Inventory
• Staffing
• Live music
• Merchandise

Prepare your inventory

Get the Guinness kegs ordered in advance and get to teaching your bar staff how to pour them properly. Believe me when I tell you that there’s no bigger snob than a Guinness critic, and they won’t hesitate to tell you when you do it wrong. The same is true for pouring it well though, and if you can bang out a shamrock in the head, it’ll put even the hardest critic’s minds at ease.

And because of this monumental demand for Guinness, it would also be a good idea for larger places to hire a couple of magic boxes and set up some floating Guinness bars throughout your venue. I once worked one in the middle of a dance floor and almost made as much as the main bar in an afternoon.

Get your staffing right

Make sure there’s enough staff rostered on to handle the volume of customers you expect to have. You don’t want to be left short-handed when you send members of your crew for a well-earned break.

If this isn’t your 1st year of operating, take a stroll down memory lane and look at your Insights to see which times were your busiest. That way, you can make the most cost-effective roster imaginable.

Also consider assigning roles and responsibilities: Assign specific roles and responsibilities to each member of your team to ensure smooth operations.

Give the jukebox the day off

Speaking of dance floors, you’re going to need some music to entice the responsibly drinking public to spank the planks. And whilst there are plenty of adequate playlists chocked full of hearty, Gaelic tunes to get your toe tapping, no other day of the year truly lends itself to a live band than St Patrick’s Day, provided you don’t live next door to any brand-new housing, and their particularly sterile brand of cultural development.

But be quick and be prepared to pay a little extra. Demand for Gaelic musicians is never higher than on St Patrick’s Day (for obvious reasons), but it’ll be worth it for the atmosphere they can create with a live audience.

Offer merchandise

There’s seldom a crowd more willing to don some merch than a St Patrick’s Day party, so when you’re ordering all of that extra Guinness, ask your rep for as much merch as they can spare.

Offer it out for free (with the purchase of 5 pints of Guinness, of course) to any and all, and watch in delight as an entire room of people in polyester top hats bounce merrily to a live rendition of Brown Eyed Girl. 

So, how do you prepare your business?

So there you have it, some easy steps to take to ensure that your venue isn’t caught off guard by March’s dark horse celebration.

Just remember that with the extra inventory you order, most suppliers will have some special merch that you can use as an incentive to drive sales (don’t forget to give your bar staff a quick refresher on the proper way to pour a pint). And it’s always a good idea to have some live music, lord knows musicians need the money after the run they’ve had.

Most of all, it’s about immersing yourself in the party so that everyone, employees and patrons alike, has the best time possible.