Prep sheet 002 — the bar
Add a mixologist to any session and three cocktails get built round the menu, at your table, from the bottles already in your kitchen. Ice, glassware, mixers and the bar kit arrive with them, and every build has a zero-proof version so nobody is handed a glass of orange juice as an afterthought. Fridays and Saturdays — there is one mixologist, and the diary fills about three weeks out.
No bar tab. No bottles bought on your behalf. No licence, because none is needed for what we actually do.
The drinks
This is the part people expect us to be shifty about, so here it is plainly. We do not sell alcohol, buy it for you, or put it on a bill. You own every bottle before our mixologist touches it, and you still own what is left at the end of the night.
You
From the shop, the supermarket, the wine merchant on the corner — wherever you already go. Tell us what you have bought and the builds are designed round it. Tell us what you would like to drink instead and we will send a short list to buy from, which is advice, not an order form.
Us
Ice that is not from your freezer tray, glassware that matches, mixers, citrus, syrups, bitters, a jigger and a proper strainer. All of it is inside the supplement, and all of it goes home with them afterwards.
Neither
Selling alcohol needs a licence, and billing it “at cost” is still selling it. We hold no licence and want none, so the arrangement is simple: you supply the drink, we supply the person who knows what to do with it.
Three builds
Three cocktails across the evening, chosen once the menu is settled and the bottles are known. These are examples of the thinking, not a fixed card — your mixologist will ask what you like and build round that.
What it costs
A supplement on top of a session, never a booking on its own. The mixologist comes with a chef, because the drinks are built round a menu somebody is cooking. Prices are placeholders until commercial sign-off.
Adding a mixologist to any tier is +£140. Adding front of house as well is +£210 for all three, which is £20 less than adding the two separately. The tiers themselves are unchanged — the three session prices are here — and sessions in PL10–PL21 carry the same £20 travel charge as any other, with a morning start adding £25.
Ingredients are invoiced afterwards at cost with the receipts. Alcohol never appears on that invoice, or on any other, because we never bought it.
The night
One mixologist at launch, so anything with a mixologist in it runs on Fridays and Saturdays and books about three weeks out.
The bar goes wherever the people are — a kitchen island, a sideboard, the end of the table. Ice, glassware and kit come out of a crate, the bottles you bought come out of your cupboard, and the first build lands while the chef is still talking you through the first dish.
Three cocktails across the evening, spaced to the courses rather than poured all at once. Between them your mixologist is clearing glasses, keeping water on the table, and — if you want it — showing you the builds properly: why the Negroni is stirred, why the lime is cooked, what a jigger is for. Same deal as the kitchen: you can watch, or you can do it yourself.
At the end, the glassware is washed and packed and the crate goes home with them. What is left in the bottles stays with you, because it was always yours.
Questions
Anything else, email hello@forkingchefing.com and a person answers.
Next
The booking questions ask which service level you want, so pick the mixologist there. Fridays and Saturdays, about three weeks out, confirmed once we have spoken.