I Made $900 Bartending a 50-Person Party
It's truly amazing to look back and see how much I've grown and learned over the years of running my mobile bartending business.
My confidence grew, I learned a lot about how to manage money, how to budget, and most importantly, what I needed to charge to make a mobile bartending business worth it.
I forgot about this, but I recently came across some old paperwork that reminded me of a time when I charged $300 for 100 person wedding!
Lol. I'm sorry, WHAT?! That's literally insane! Current me would say, "Absolutely not!"
I wish I could give past me a hug for genuinely not knowing any better, and for doing my best with what I knew at the time.
Those were YEARS of me working events where I significantly undercharged.
Some I barely broke even, some cost me money, and there were times where I had to use my personal income to cover business expenses. ...separate from my personal initial investments.
It wasn't until I quit my bartending job and decided to focus on my mobile bartending business full-time, that I started realizing and questioning what I was doing. My rates weren't making sense for the amount of time, energy, effort, and money I was putting into it.
I wasn't running my business like a business. I was booking events and making money, well charging for it, but I wasn't really profiting, nor was I consistenly making enough to support my business and myself separately.
I needed to make enough for personal/mom-life expenses, and what a business needed to operate.
A lot of things needed to change, but my pricing structure was one of the biggest.
Package Pricing Wasn't Working for Me
When I first started, I didn't know anything about running a business, and I certainly didn't know anything about running a mobile bartending business. I started with tier packages because that's the only thing I saw online. There weren't a lot examples to go off of at the time, and any information about how to start a mobile bartending business didn't exist yet.
I had three packages with names that complemented my business. Simply Organic, Sippin' Sustainably, & Go Green Revolution. Lol! 😂❤️
It was cute and the packages were selling but behind the scenes I was having a hard time making sense of the business side of things.
I tried different ways of tracking expenses and budgeting, but the ranges in guest counts and hours of service made it difficult to understand what I was actually charging for, what each event was actually costing me, and why I seemed to not be making enough money.
Even til this day, I still struggle to understand how some mobile bartenders make those kind of packages work. ...like I'm genuinely curious.
How are people charging one price for a range of 25-50 guests, up to a certain number of hours, with one to two bartenders, and a selection of sigature cocktails? How do you accurately track what's working and what's not when the amount of service you're providing can vary that much? And from the client's perspective, how does it make sense for someone hosting 25 guests, to pay the same price as someone hosting 50? How does an event with one bartender fall under the same price as an event with two?
How does that affect the profit? What do they know that I don't?
I'm obviously not saying that it can't work, but from my experience, I just couldn't figure out how to make it work for my business.
Because I spent more than enough time trying, I was done trying to make it work. So instead, I decided to stop doing what I saw everyone else doing, and come up with something of my own.
Figuring Out What Actually Made Sense for My Business
I sat down and really looked at everything.
What services was I offering? What were people actually booking me for? What kinds of requests was I getting? How much work went into each event? And realistically, how much did I need to make to cover everything I needed to pay for?
I broke it all down. Staffing (that's other people and myself as I was still a bartender). The services I provided. Drinkware, straws, napkins, ice, and all the other necessities that went into serving guests. I even rethought how I approached the signature cocktails.
For example, instead of allowing clients to choose basically any cocktail known to man, I realized it made more sense to offer a menu for them to choose from. That way I could have more control over minimizing waste of ingredients and money.
I thought carefully about staffing. In my business, I paid everyone working the event the same rate regardless of whether they were working as bartenders, bar backs, or servers. For the most part we were all bartenders, and our responsibilities could change throughout the event.
I might spend the first two hours behind the bar, and then step out to help with wine service at the tables. Someone might be bar backing, but might stop to make drinks if the bar got slammed. We worked together, and interchangeably, so charging a different rate for each role really didn't make sense to me.
Then there were the requests that didn't fit into a package. What if a client wanted me to provide almost everything but preferred to use their own drinkware? What if someone only needed a hour of service for an in-office happy hour they were hosting for their employees? What about someone who needed six hours of service for a day party?
I wanted to accommodate my clients as much as I reasonably could. It was a big part of how I approached my business. I didn't want to require a minimum number of service hours. But if I was going to offer that kind of flexibility, I needed a way to price it without calculating everything from scratch every time someone sent an inquiry. That had already proven to be a headache.
Because I was running my business single-handedly while being a single-mom, I didn't have the time or the patience to make every quote a whole project. So I kept asking myself:
How do I make this easier?
How do I make the price and it's adjustments make sense for the client?
How do I keep track of what I'm providing, what it's costing me, and what I'm actually making?
How do I make a profit?
Asking myself those questions and getting realistic about what I needed, I eventually came up with a three part pricing formula.
It was repeatable, easier to track, and made a lot more sense for the way that I operated. I could see exactly what I was charging for, and so could the client. If they needed more hours, additional staff, or certain supplies, I knew which part of the quote I needed to change. If there was something they were providing themselves, I could see where an adjustment made sense.
I stopped trying to fit every event into one of three packages, and started pricing the actual event.
Learning to Track What I was Making
Changing my pricing was one thing. Learning how to manage the money was another. That took some figuring out too.
I tried different ways of budgeting and tracking expenses before eventually landing on something that worked for me.
I started budgeting by event.
The way I was tracking and budgeting before was also where I adopted other people's practices.
I realized, instead of trying to make sense of everything by the week or the month, I tracked the money associated with each event separately. I could see what I charged the client, what I spent, what I spent it on, and what was left when everything was said and done. I also started making sure I paid myself! Not just for bartending, but for the work I did to prepare for the event.
My living expenses and expenses for my son weren't business expenses. I needed to be able to pay myself for the work I was doing and still have money in my business to cover things like insurance, storage, and other operational costs. I think that's something that often gets overlooked when people talk about how much money they make from mobile bartending.
Some mobile bartenders come online and share what they charged for an event, but rarely, if ever, do I see them explain what they actually had left afterward.
You can charge $2,100 for an event, but that doesn't mean $2,100 goes into your pocket. Or does it? Not if you're paying to operate a business.
What about the staff? The mixers and garnishes? The supplies? The processing fees? The time spent preparing? What did the event actually cost? After all that, what did you have left?
The 50-person Party That Left Me With About $900
Fast forward, I got to the point where I could confidently put together a quote and understand what I was likely to make from an event.
This 50-person birthday party that I charge $2,100 for example.
The client booked four hours of bar service, two bartenders, two signature cocktails, and a table bar set-up. It wasn't anything super over the top luxury event kind of way. It was a very casual party with close family and friends at home. Most of my events usually are, and they've grown to be my favorite type of event to service.
After the event, I tracked the payments, processing fees, staff payouts, ingredients, ice, and other money spent. I paid myself for the preparation and planning I managed before the party. When I finished accounting for everything outgoing, I had a $908.69 balance left.
To be clear, the balance wasn't a formal accounting profit calculation that included every possible business expense or tax obligation. It was the cash I had available after everything I tracked, after the event.
I can finally explain where the money went! I'm not assuming anymore. I could look at an event and not just understand what I charged, but what I paid out, what I set aside, and what I had left. Considering that I use to charge $300 for a 100-person wedding, that's a pretty big deal to me!
What I Wish I Knew Sooner
Even though mobile bartending didn't end up being the lifelong business I once thought I'd run, the years I spent doing it taught me so much!
There's a lot I wish I hadn't had to learn the hard way. There's a lot I wish I had figured out sooner. But regardless, I'm grateful I learned it at all!
When I say I made $900 bartending a 50-person party, part of me says that a little braggingly. Not because I think $900 is some unbelievable amount of money (well, in bartending, yeah kind of, especially when I started from zero), but because I'm proud of myself for finally figuring our how to run my business in a way that made sense financially!
I know what it took to get there. I remember the events I undercharged for. I remember trying to make packages work. I remember using my own money to cover expenses and wondering how I could keep doing it full-time.
Being able to look at an event and understand what I had actually earned means something to me, it's also why I wanted to share this experience.
I know there are people starting mobile bartending businesses right now who are trying to navigate the same things I was. I know what it's like to genuinely need help and not have a lot of extra money to invest in getting that help, and that's why I do my best to share free resources, and talk openly about what I've learned.
On the other hand, I can't share every part of what I spent years (over a decade) developing for free. I see how often it goes overlooked that building and growing a business requires some investment. Either way, I put my pricing system into a simple guide to follow.
In it, I walk through how I approached pricing my services, how I developed my rates, what I considered when quoting an event, and the breakdown of that $2,100 party.
Also included is a fill-in pricing reference sheet so you can organize your own rates once you've figured out what makes for your business.
The system is there, but it's really about understanding the thought process behind it, and using that to figure out your own pricing. There isn't one way to charge, and there isn't a universal number that every mobile bartending business goes by.
If I could go back in time and skip one night of going out, eating out, or buying drinks after work, just so I could afford a guide that helped me understand how to price my mobile bartending services, I would. I spent a lot of time, and lost a lot of money simply because I didn't know any better. So if I could do it over again, investing in learning how to price my services would be one of the first things I'd do.
If you're interested, you can find it here, The Mobile Bartending Pricing Formula Guide & Workbook
If you end up using it, please let me know how it works out for you. Let me know in the comments, or feel free to email me directly. 🥂
Comments