The Christmas Party Season Starts in September: An Ordering Timeline That Avoids the November Panic
by CWDH, 4 min reading time
December trade in Irish hospitality is not a month — it is about eight nights. Industry analysis of the "12 Pubs" season estimates around 350,000 people take part in Christmas crawls nationally, spending €65–€85 a head per night, with nearly four fifths of that activity crammed into the two pre-Christmas weekends. The same analysis estimates a traditional pub can take €8,000–€13,000 on a peak crawl night against €4,000–€6,000 on a normal Friday — roughly double — and that corporate parties punch far above their weight, making up about a fifth of festive customers but nearly a third of the revenue. For restaurants and hotels, the pattern is the same: the works-do bookings, the set-menu parties and the family gatherings pile onto the same few dates.
Which means the venues that win December are simply the ones whose equipment, stock and bookings are organised before those eight nights arrive. Here is the working timeline, with the actual maths.
The maths of one party night (do this sum first)
Take a single 60-cover party booking and count what it really consumes. The toast: 60 guests hold a sparkling glass at the same moment, so that is 60 coupes or flutes minimum — plus wine and water glasses running alongside, which puts roughly 180 glasses on the floor at once before the bar pours a single cocktail. The table: a three-course set menu ties up 180-plus settings of matching cutlery and the crockery for every course, all in use before the wash cycle returns anything. A hot buffet for the same 60 needs four to six GN 1/1 chafing dishes with heat under them, spare inserts for refills, and around one and a half plates per guest — because buffet guests take a clean plate every trip. Now multiply by your biggest December night, compare it to what is actually on your shelves, and you have your order list. Venues that do this sum in September buy calmly at pack prices. Venues that do it on 10 December ring every supplier in Ireland along with everyone else.
September: the audit and the long-lead orders
Two hours in the store room with your projected party numbers. Count glassware, cutlery, crockery and buffet kit against the maths above; retire the chipped and the mismatched while replacements are easy to get. Order the long-lead items now — glassware and cutlery in trade packs, porcelain top-ups in your existing ranges so everything still matches, and anything branded or printed: party menus, menu holders and printed materials carry the longest lead times of the season because every venue in the country orders theirs in November. September is also when hotels should confirm the function-room inventory — table numbers, cloths, buffet display stands and risers — while there is still time to fill gaps.
October: equipment, and the booking machinery
October is for the kit that makes volume possible and the policies that protect it. On equipment: test every chafing dish and induction heater before you need them nightly, count GN inserts (the item that always runs out mid-service), and if glass polishing is still done by hand, install the polisher now — at 400 glasses an hour it will earn its keep every single night of party season. On bookings: this is the month to lock the December machinery — deposits on all party bookings (non-refundable inside 14 days for peak dates), set menus only on the peak nights so the kitchen fires in waves rather than à la carte chaos, and pre-orders collected two weeks out for parties above ten. Every no-show on a peak December Saturday is a table you turned someone else away from.
November: consumables, dry run, and sell the gaps
If the big orders landed, November is small stuff: napkins, candles or rechargeable table lamps, chalkboards rewritten for festive menus, bill presenters for deposit-and-voucher season. Then the dry run: set one table exactly as it will look on a party night, photograph it well, and use that photo everywhere to sell the remaining dates — midweek December nights are the easiest gap to fill and the cheapest to service. What November must not contain is discovering you are forty forks short; by mid-month, suppliers are quoting January.
December: trade, don't shop
The prepared venue spends December doing the only thing that makes money — serving parties at full tilt. For the peak-night operations themselves — stock depth on the floor, the wash-cycle bottleneck, room layout for standing crowds — our surge-weekend playbook applies to a works do exactly as it does to a county final. The one-line version of this whole article: December's profit is decided by a stock count in September.
Shop the range
- Glassware — coupes, flutes, wine and water in trade packs
- Cutlery and porcelain for set-menu depth
- Buffet equipment, display systems and chafing dishes
- Glass polisher — install before the rush
- Menus, chalkboards and bill presenters
Festive season figures are industry estimates from the Irish Entrepreneur Blog's 12 Pubs revenue analysis. Equipment quantities are CWDH supplier-side rules of thumb — count your own covers before ordering.
