Bar Opening and Closing Checklist

Walk the well, speed rail, and back bar against the par sheet. Note bottles below par for the day's order; the bar manager places the order with the distributor rep before the cutoff window.

Pour a short test pour from each tap to confirm clarity and carbonation. Check keg weight or FOB level; flag any keg likely to blow during peak service so the bar back can stage a backup in the walk-in.

Citrus wheels, twists, picks, olives, cherries, salt and sugar rims. Cover and date-label garnish containers; uncovered garnish at the rail is a frequent inspector callout.

Walk the kitchen with the sous chef before doors open. Pick up any 86'd cocktail ingredients, citrus, or shared modifiers so the bartender can pre-empt server questions during the rush.

Use a chlorine or quat test strip per the sanitizer in use. Chlorine target is 50–100 ppm; quat target is typically 200–400 ppm — confirm with the product label. Log the reading; an inspector pulls this log first.

Cold-holding requires 41°F or below. Record reach-in, low-boy, and bottle cooler temps. If any unit reads above 41°F, move TCS items (juice, dairy, garnish) to the walk-in and flag for repair before service.

Pull bar mats, hose them at the dish pit, and degrease the rubber. Bar floors are the most common slip-and-fall source for staff; document any cracked tile or standing-water issue in the manager log.

Confirm wash and rinse temperatures hit spec and the detergent and sanitizer reservoirs are not empty. Most underbar washers use chemical sanitization at 50 ppm chlorine — verify with a test strip on a clean glass.

Empty any ice held overnight, sanitize the well, and refill from the ice machine using the dedicated scoop. Never use a glass to scoop — broken glass in ice is a critical-violation event that closes the bar for the night.

Open a test tab on the POS (Toast, Square, TouchBistro, or whatever the venue runs), fire a $0 test ticket to the bar printer, and run a $0.01 auth on the card reader. Catching a printer or pin-pad outage at 5pm is much cheaper than catching it at 7pm.

State ABC requires the license posted in public view. Confirm the expiration date on the wall copy matches the renewal you have on file. An expired license at inspection means immediate suspension of service.

Every bartender and serving-alcohol employee on shift must have a current responsible-beverage cert (TIPS, ServSafe Alcohol, or state equivalent — varies by state). Pull the schedule from 7shifts or HotSchedules and confirm against the certification log.

Five-minute huddle with bartenders and bar backs: today's features, BTG additions, 86s, large parties on the books, allergens to flag, and the closing rotation.

Walk the floor for stragglers and reconcile every open tab before close-of-day on the POS. Tabs left open past lockout become voids the next morning and break tip-out reconciliation.

Print the bartender server-report, count cash, calculate tip-out per the house formula, and log any variance against the opening bank. Variances over $5 get noted in the manager log; a pattern of shorts on the same bartender escalates to the GM.

For any short or over outside the house tolerance, file a written variance report tagged to the bartender, the shift, and the POS server-report. Pattern detection across weeks is how skim and miscount get caught.

Rotate fresh juice and dairy to the front of the low-boy, discard anything past 24 hours, and date-label any prep made tonight. FIFO discipline at the bar is what keeps citrus and cream from making the next day's daiquiri taste off.

Turn off blenders, frozen-drink machines, and the underbar washer. Leave the bottle cooler and beer cooler on. Confirm the glass washer is drained on its scheduled night to prevent biofilm.

Coats, phones, cards left at the rail go to the lost-and-found bin with a date tag. Cards left in the POS get cut at 24 hours per the house policy — log the card before cutting.

Refusals of service, ID confiscations, comps over $25, breakage, and any guest complaint go in the manager log. The log is the first document the GM reviews on Monday and the first one ABC asks for if a complaint comes in.

Capture time, parties involved, action taken, and any staff witnesses. For an alcohol-related incident (refusal, intervention, ID seizure), include the bartender's TIPS or RBS cert number on file. Attach photos if applicable.