What does a cabinet shop build for a bar, and what comes from the equipment supplier?
The cabinet shop builds the wood: the back bar, the die wall and face of the front bar, the bar top and the rail. The stainless underbar, the ice bins, the speed rails and the coolers come from the restaurant equipment supplier, and the shop drawing is built around them. Sorting out that split is the first step of commercial cabinetry and custom millwork in Owensboro.
The die wall is the one people forget belongs to the shop. It is the wall under the front bar that holds the top up, with the bartender’s stainless well on one side and the customer’s knees on the other. The shop frames it, faces the customer side to match the back bar, and sets the bar top on it.
Casework and millwork in Daviess County runs $300 - $900 per linear foot, priced to the drawing. A back bar with lit display shelving, a bottle step and cooler cutouts sits toward the top of that range.
How many bottles is the back bar built for?
The shop asks two things first: how many bottles the bar wants on display, and how tall the tallest one stands. The count sets the length of the run and how many tiers it carries. The tallest bottle sets the spacing between shelves. Bring the list itself to the first meeting, not a photo of somebody else’s bar.
A bourbon list is full of odd shapes. Tall decanter bottles, squat wide ones, wax-dipped tops that need clearance above the neck, releases some bars like to show in the gift box. Space every shelf for the tallest bottle and the wall wastes a lot of air above the ordinary ones. A better drawing gives the tall and odd shapes a tier of their own and spaces the rest closer, with part of a tier left open for the allocated bottles that arrive a few times a year.
How deep is a bottle shelf, and why are the shelves stepped?
Most display shelving is one bottle deep, so every label faces the room. A shelf two bottles deep holds more, but the back row hides behind the front row’s shoulders. The bottle step fixes that. It is a riser along the back of the shelf that lifts the second row until its labels read from a barstool. Backup stock does not belong on the display. It goes below.
Each step is sized from the bottles in front of it, another reason the list comes before the drawing. Some bars run one riser along every display shelf. Others build several steps into the showpiece section and keep the working shelves flat, so the bartender can slide a bottle out without lifting it over another.
A long shelf of full glass bottles is also heavier than anything in a kitchen cabinet. The drawing sets how far a shelf can span between supports and how thick it has to be to stay straight. A sag shows first in the middle of the longest span.
How high can the display climb before the bartender needs a ladder?
The bartender pours from what can be reached standing on the floor, from the counter up to about shoulder height. Above that the wall is display, and where the ceiling is tall it can keep climbing. The bottles up there are the ones customers ask about, not the ones poured every night. Reaching them takes a rolling library ladder, which the shop builds as part of the millwork.
The ladder hangs from a rail that runs the length of the wall, and that rail needs solid backing or a heavy cornice to carry a person’s weight sideways. It also needs a place to park at the end of the run, out of the bartender’s aisle on a busy night.
What has to fit under and behind the back bar?
Under the counter there are usually reach-in coolers, often a glass washer, a sink base and closed cabinets for backup stock. Behind and inside it run power for the lighting, the point-of-sale cables and sometimes plumbing. Each one becomes a cutout, a removable panel or a chase in the carcase, and the shop needs the equipment spec sheets to draw them before anything is cut.
- A reach-in cooler is a hole sized to the unit, and it has to breathe. Some pull air through the front grille, some need open space behind or beside them. Box one in the wrong way and the compressor runs hot all night.
- A glass washer needs a front that comes off for service and a cabinet floor that will not mind water.
- The sink base has no back and usually no bottom, so the plumber can work through it.
- The POS cables need a chase up through the cabinetry, so the screen sits where the bartender wants it and no cord crosses the display.
The commercial page keeps the full list of what the drawing has to know, from the refrigeration model to the fire rating the inspector expects behind a bar. All of it lands in the shop drawing, which runs $0 - $500 and is credited to the job by most shops.
How is a bottle wall lit?
Two ways, usually. Light strips in the front edge or underside of each shelf wash the bottles from above, and a backlit panel behind them makes the bourbon glow amber through the glass. Many bars use some of each. The lighting goes on the drawing before the shelves are cut, since the channel, the wire path and the power supply all live inside the cabinetry.
The shelf material follows from the light. Glass shelves let a backlit panel shine through every tier, and they show every fingerprint and ring of dust under it. Wood shelves with a strip tucked under the front edge hide the source and look warmer, which suits a cherry or white oak back bar.
Less visible, and more often wrong, is the driver, the power supply the strips run on and the part most likely to need replacing. It cannot be sealed behind a glued panel. The usual answer is a removable panel in the cabinet top or a door below the counter where the drivers sit together, away from the display, with the wire runs drawn so an electrician can follow them without taking a shelf apart.
What wood and finish take a spilled drink on the bar top and rail?
A hardwood top in a sprayed catalyzed finish, or a hardwood top under a poured bar-top coating. Either one handles a spilled drink while the finish is unbroken. The sprayed finish keeps the feel of wood and can be repaired in sections. The poured coating is thick and glassy and harder to patch once something cuts through it.
The rail is the rounded edge on the customer side where forearms rest, milled from solid hardwood to a profile on the drawing. Some bars run it in a contrasting wood to the top as a way to tie the front bar to the back bar.
White oak has an honest claim in this town. It is the same Kentucky white oak that becomes barrels at Green River Distilling downtown, and it is hard enough for a top that gets leaned on all night. The guide to Kentucky white oak and the other hardwoods that hold up on the river covers the species. A cherry back bar with a white oak top and rail is a combination worth asking about.
What locks at closing time?
The top-shelf display usually does, behind locking glass doors or a roll-down front that covers the section after close. Backup stock under the counter goes behind locking doors, and the working shelves often stay open. Which bottles get locked is the owner’s inventory decision, and the shop builds the locks into the drawing rather than screwing hasps onto the face later.
Locking glass doors take up depth in front of the bottles, need a frame strong enough to hold a lock, and catch the shelf light, so the lighting gets placed to keep glare off the glass. A roll-down front, slatted wood or a metal shutter, runs in side tracks and needs a housing at the top to roll into. Draw that housing into the cornice or it ends up as a box stuck on the wall.
Under the counter, locks keyed alike are easier on a manager, and a separate key for the high-value cabinet gives an owner a tighter count. A lock routed into a door during the build sits flush with the face. One added after opening sits on top of it, where everyone at the bar can see it.