Audit the bleed
Live-service review of pour cost, prep load, and where builds quietly lose money. Most margin problems are program problems — pour cost is the diagnostic, not a scolding.
Bar consultant · Operations
Bar consulting for the whole operation — not a drinks list.
Andreas Sanidiotis is hired when the menu is ambitious and the room is quietly losing money — or when an opening needs more than recipes. Pour cost, prep, suppliers, inventory, service standards, and a team that can hit the specs without the author on the stick. World’s 50 Best #25, two Tales nominations, programs on three continents.
#25 in the worldWorld’s 50 Best Bars, 2018 — a program built and run from behind the bar
9 straight yearson the World’s 50 Best lists, 2015–2023
2× Tales Top 10Spirited Awards nominations in one year — Cocktail Bar & Bar Team, 2018
3 continentsprograms in New York, Austin, Nicosia, and Abu Dhabi
The hire
The bar as a business. The drinks as the product.
Cocktail consultancy writes the list. Beverage consultancy covers hotels, restaurants, and bars as a category. Bar consulting is the operations job: the machine that lets a short, opinionated menu survive a full room and still hit its number.
Rebuild the machine
Re-costed specs, batching, mise en place, supplier setup, inventory discipline. The same work that let Here Nor There / In Plain Sight keep ambitious builds at Friday volume.
Leave a team
On-floor training and train-the-trainer so the next hire doesn’t rewrite the menu. You own the spec book. Six engagements, fixed scope.
A twenty-seat room in Nicosia held a World’s 50 Best place for nine years because the prep and the standards were as tight as the drinks — Lost & Found. A New York list stayed ambitious because the workflows were built for a full room — Vine Bar. Budgeting the hire: How Much Does a Bar Consultant Cost?
Related consulting
Same practice. Different brief.
Use this page for bar operations. Use the others when the room or the scope is different.
Hotel F&B
Property openings, lobby-to-late programs, banquet volume. Hotel bar consultant — and the 16-week timeline.
New York
NYC-based rooms that want local floor time. Still works on-site and remote elsewhere. Bar consultant NYC.
Menus vs. the whole beverage side
Drinks, signature serves, technique: cocktail consultant. Hotels, restaurants, and bars as a category: beverage consultant. Build sequence: bar program development.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
What's the difference between a bar consultant and a cocktail consultant?
A cocktail consultant develops the drinks — menus, signature serves, technique. A bar consultant is hired for the operation around those drinks: pour cost, prep and batching, suppliers, inventory, service standards, and the team that has to hit the specs on a Friday. This practice does both; this page is the operations hire.
What does a bar operations consultant actually deliver?
A costed menu, prep workflows the existing team can run, supplier and inventory setup, written specs and SOPs, and on-floor training. The house owns every document when the engagement ends. A list without costings and a trained team is homework, not consulting.
How long does a bar consulting engagement take?
A full opening program runs twelve to sixteen weeks plus ninety days of post-opening optimization. A refresh of a running bar — audit, re-costed menu, retraining — runs six to ten weeks. Advisory retainers are monthly, for rooms that want an outside set of eyes after the handoff.
Do you work with independent bars or only groups?
Both. Independent rooms, restaurant bars, and multi-unit groups. The scope changes with the room — a twenty-seater and a three-unit group do not get the same proposal — but the doctrine does not: costed specs, prep that survives volume, a team that can train the next hire.
How is bar consulting priced?
Fixed project fees scoped before work begins, or a monthly advisory retainer. You know the full cost up front. Honest market ranges are in How Much Does a Bar Consultant Cost?
Next step
Fifteen minutes usually answers it.
Tell us the room, the timeline, and what is not working — you’ll leave the call knowing what the operation needs, whether or not we work together.