We all know the scene. It’s a busy Friday or Saturday night and a customer bellies up to the bar at a restaurant or hotel but sees no open seats or spots from which to get the bartender’s attention. Then, alas, they spy the little area at the bar with a stainless-steel top with holes in it where the bartender places a bunch of ready-to-go drinks and tickets. Surely, they think, it’s OK to stand and order there.
Being in the hospitality industry, we all know that’s the service end of the bar and it’s a huge no-no to crowd that space, as it’s meant as a place for servers to grab drinks for their tables.
Image courtesy Studio Barmagic“We’ve all seen people constantly standing there in the service industry,” says Kristin Sedej, principal, S2O Consultants, who’s designed many back service bars for stadium and entertainment venues. While front-of-the-house service bars are relatively easy to install and actually commonplace, they can fall short of supporting a higher-volume operation.
For high-volume operations like big hotels, resorts, casinos, arenas and even large restaurant groups, service bars simply make sense. “Service bars are great for speed of service, number one,” says Beth Kuczera, president of Equipment Dynamics, who headed up the design and install of the back-of-the-house service bars at Gibsons Italia and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises’ tiki concept Three Dots and a Dash, both in Chicago. “They also enhance the guest experience; the quality of the beverages improves because bartenders don’t have to worry about guests in front of them, they can just follow drink recipes and their sole focus is on making the drinks the best they can be.”
What’s more, back-of-the-house service bars offer straightforward design. They don’t have to be pretty, and they can be stocked full of extra refrigeration, prep space, liquor storage, dishwashing, dish racks and more. “I never met a bartender who doesn’t like a back-of-the-house service bar,” says Tobin Ellis, principal at Studio Barmagic, a Las Vegas-based bar design consultancy. “These dedicated areas are cheaper to build per square foot, and they exponentially throttle revenue, profitability, speed of service and hospitality. They require far less labor because one bartender can handle just about anything.”
Back-of-the-house service bars also take the strain off front-bar service bartenders. “Bartenders can make [front-of-the-house] service bars work, but ultimately it forces the bartender to have split priorities constantly,” Ellis says. “The reality is you can bang out a thousand drinks from a back service bar without having to interact with humans.” Not to mention, they give staff a place to vent or scream into their napkins or aprons behind the scenes.
These types of support service bars have an interesting history, Ellis adds. “When the whole tiki craze happened in the ’30s and ’40s, some of the most famous bars completely closed off the bar to the back of the house because their drink recipes were so secretive,” he says. “You had places like Trader Vic’s and The Beachcomber heavily competing, so there was only a tiny little window where the bartender in the back put out drinks for servers to turn around, grab and serve. That way no one had any idea how those drinks were made.”
Although there are many benefits to back-of-the-house service bars, they still have to make sense for the operation — and the challenge can also be convincing the operator to build one. “You have to have enough volume and want a seamless operation for drinks versus just one that relies on the front bar,” Sedej says.
That said, below are some key considerations for designing service bars.
Following Flow & Function
Back-of-the-house service bars don’t have to take up a ton of space. Ellis points out an example where he once built an 8-inch-by-10-inch “closet” of sorts out of a hallway between two kitchens. “We put in two wells and stacked the space from floor to ceiling with everything a bartender would need,” he says.
Regardless of size, it’s important to think about the flow in, out and around these bars when designing them. “Make sure there’s some adjacencies,” Sedej says. “If you have a server coming back for food, you want the pickup close enough to the service bar, but make sure there’s enough space between the two areas because servers get drinks at different times than they get food.” Following the full hands in, full hands out motto of foodservice, the intent is that servers would come in — ideally — with their hands full of dirties, drop them, and go to grab either food on one side or drinks on the other before heading back out.
“You might also want a counter with a point-of-sale system so they can do some order entry while they’re back there,” says Sedej. Along those lines, the service bar will also include a printer. This allows the server to enter drink orders via the point-of-sale system, just like food. This approach can help eliminate confusion when the bartender makes the drinks and when servers pick them up.
The nice thing about back-of-the-house service bars is that they don’t have to be pretty. “You don’t need any fancy bartops or millwork; these bars are meant to be more functional and durable above all else,” says Sedej.
When it comes to the main elements of a service bar, Sedej favors mostly plug-and-play components and designs for flexibility. “I might take back the bar refrigerator and put a reinforced top on it to set bottles and glass rack dollies on it,” she says. Plenty of space for glassware is a must, which could include extra hanging glass racks or vertical shelving to maximize storage space. Sedej also uses this space to install an ice maker sized large enough to support the entire operation.
Another consideration when designing a service bar is to include extra prep space. “If you don’t have a dedicated beverage prep area [such as that back-of-the-house service bar], where does it happen? Right on the front bar right before or even during service,” says Ellis.
Back-of-the-house service bars — and the extra prep space they offer — can also make it easier for bartenders to test new drinks for the cocktail menu. “There’s something really fun about watching a bartender work on menu development,” says Kuczera. In the front of the house, everyone wants a full show, but in the back there’s room for experimentation. “Does McDonald’s put everything out on their menu and instantly roll it out? No, they test it out,” she notes. “So how do you do the same in a bar environment?” That’s where back-of-the-house service bars come into play.
Twinning Wells Front and Back
Of course, among the most important design considerations for back-of-the-house service bars are the wells. At Sequoia in Washington, D.C., where Ellis once bartended, the outdoor patio bar was always busy. The bartender wells had to be designed for maximum efficiency. “It was like a baseball dugout,” he says. “Glass racks overhead, no stepping — you had your tools, glassware, rinser all around you — even the frozen margarita machine was just to your left so you could pull it and fill.”
Ideally, Ellis says, bartenders always have close access to all the shakers and tools the cocktail menu requires, a dishwashing station or a rinser, a prep sink, a prep table, a soda gun, trash cans, guest check holders, a POS and printer for tickets, a place for dirties, undercounter or backbar refrigeration for wines by the glass, beer and prepped juices, and garnish and glassware all around.
“You want every single station, whether it’s in the front or the back, identical,” says Ellis. “If they’re not identical, now my frontal lobe kicks in and I have to think too much if I’ve been trained on the front bar and am now working the back. You don’t want someone’s hand hitting the ice where there should have been a sink. You wouldn’t do that to a fighter pilot — move where the guns are.”
An extreme analogy, to be certain, but Kuczera agrees. “Every station needs to be a power station so everyone has what they need,” she says. “Efficient bar management and support of service bars really impacts the bottom line, the profitability and the guest experience.”
For Gibsons Italia, Kuczera leveraged the back-of-the-house service bar for extra temperature-controlled wine storage to support the restaurant’s elaborate wine list. “What’s cool about [back-of-the-house] service bars is that you can have volume behind the scenes,” she says. “There’s only so much wine you can store in the front bar, but in the back service bar, you can have coolers that are maybe not that attractive but give you extra storage.”
Extra refrigeration in the back can also be used for batched cocktails, garnish, prepped juices and more. Plus, Ellis says, it’s a great place to combine liquor and dry storage. “It becomes a point of control because to get to the liquor room, you have to walk through the bar when someone is there — it’s very visible, not some dark hallway,” he says. “When it’s slow, the bartender can go back there and run inventory and restock. And when everyone’s done for the day you can pull a cage down and lock it all up.”
Sanitation and Warewashing
These days, an enhanced commitment to sanitation is key everywhere. “People have realized that sanitation is not just for back of house — it’s for the bar too,” Kuczera says. “When the pandemic started, sanitation was theater. People watch what’s going on in the front of house.” Why not support that cleanliness at the back of the house?
If we’re following that line of thought, dump sinks –– where bartenders might toss their dirty glassware, tools and silverware –– should not be in the front. The idea is that servers will bring most of the dirty glassware to the back, where it can be cleaned by the service bartender quickly and efficiently and set out for reuse, Ellis says. There should also be plenty of dipper wells and rinsers constantly flushing at the front and backbars for bartenders to keep cleaning as they go, he adds.
Extra hand sinks help too. “I always put a hand sink on the outside of the service bar so waitstaff can wash their hands too,” Kuczera says. “Ten years ago you wouldn’t see that, but now we do it all the time.”
Given all the benefits and low cost of designing back-of-the-house service bars, Ellis says he hopes more operators will embrace them in the years to come, especially as profit margins tighten. “The front-of-the-house bartender might bring the guests in and keep them there while the back-of-the-house bartender makes all the money.”
Back-of-the-House Service Bar Benefits
- Improved throughput and speed of service
- Better-quality drinks
- Low-cost design
- Cocktail menu testing/staging area
- Extra cold/dry/glassware/liquor storage
- More dishwashing capability
- Small square-footage requirement
