The best bar carts to start with

A first bar cart should be a low-stakes object. You do not yet know whether you will use it daily or resent it in a hallway, so the right buy is light enough to move while you work that out and cheap enough that being wrong costs an afternoon rather than a month's furniture budget.

Everything below weighs under 22 lb and publishes a per-shelf load rating. The pick is the HOOBRO BF56TC01: two shelves, 16.7 lb, 44 lb rated on each. Two shelves is deliberate — a starter cart with three tiers gives you more places to put things you have not bought yet.

What a starter cart actually has to do

Hold six bottles, four glasses and a tray, and move when asked. That is the whole specification, and it is easier to meet than the market implies.

Six bottles at roughly 3 lb each is 18 lb. Four rocks glasses is another 4 lb or so. A tray, a bucket and a shaker adds maybe 8 lb. Call it 30 lb spread across two shelves, which every cart here clears comfortably. The binding constraint on a starter cart is never weight — it is shelf area and shelf gap.

Shelf area first. A 24 inch shelf holds eight 2.95 inch bottles edge to edge, and nobody arranges bottles edge to edge, so plan on six. That is exactly the number in the starter bottle list, which is not a coincidence: the list was built around what one shelf holds.

Shelf gap second. A Libbey Perception coupe is 6 inches tall. If the gap between your two shelves is 7 inches, coupes stand on the lower shelf and the bottles get the top. If it is 6, they do not, and your glassware ends up in a kitchen cupboard, which defeats the point of owning a cart. Very few listings publish shelf gap, so it is worth measuring on delivery and returning if it does not work.

Two shelves or three?

Two, for a first cart. Three shelves at the depths in this price band — 11 to 13 inches — shrinks the gaps, and small gaps are what stop tall things standing up. The HOOBRO BF35TC01 is here because it manages three shelves at 12.8 inches deep with a 55 lb rating, which is genuinely good, but it is the pick for someone who already knows they own enough to fill it. The full argument is in two tiers versus three.

What you can safely ignore on a first cart

• Wine racks, unless you drink wine. A rack you do not use is shelf area you paid for and cannot reclaim.
• Mirrored glass, unless you want to wipe it. It is the best-photographing shelf material and the highest-maintenance one.
• Anything over about 25 lb. A heavy first cart is a cart that never gets tried in a second position, and the second position is usually the right one.

What to buy after the cart

In order: a tray, four rocks glasses, a jigger. The tray because it groups the bottles into one object and catches drips; the glasses because a 12 oz double old fashioned covers more drinks than any other single shape; the jigger because it is the difference between a drink you can repeat and a drink you got lucky with. Everything else can wait. The tools roundup and the glassware roundup cover both in detail.