Stocking the cart

A cart with nothing on it is furniture. Stocking one is the part almost nobody writes about properly, because it is where a buying guide has to stop describing objects and start making choices — which bottles, how many glasses, which tools, and what gets left in the kitchen.

The constraint everyone ignores is arithmetic. A standard 750 ml bottle is about 11.8 inches tall and 2.95 inches in diameter. A cart shelf 24 inches wide holds eight of those in a single row if you leave no gaps, which you will, so call it six. Add a coupe glass at 3.75 inches across the rim and the row is five bottles and two glasses. That is the real capacity of a shelf people imagine holding a whole bar.

Everything in this section works from that arithmetic. The roundups cover the glassware, the tools, ice buckets and tongs — chosen by height rather than by looks, because a bucket is the one thing that has to fit under a shelf — and trays, which is where the 12 by 16 inch figure this whole site keeps citing comes from. The guides cover the bottles and the order to buy them in, and the comparison settles the one glass question people actually argue about.

The same arithmetic decides the most popular thing people do with a cart that is not a bar. Setting up a coffee bar cart turns on three published numbers — the machine's height against the shelf gap, its wattage, and whether there is a reservoir — and weight, the thing everyone worries about, turns out not to matter at all.

Then the objects that go on top of all that. Decanters are chosen by height and capacity rather than by cut, and their stoppers do not seal. Bar mats are sized for a commercial counter, which is why the standard one overhangs most carts. Whiskey stones or big ice settles a question with one manufacturer's own temperature figure. Nick and Nora or coupe turns on which glass survives being carried. And wine glass racks saves more shelf area than anything else at the price — if your shelves are wood rather than glass.