We are very excited and looking forward to this weekend! We are going to be providing the mobile bar at the first “Communion Unplugged” music event at the Hoults Yard in Newcastle on Friday 11th and Saturday 12th May 2012.

The event was formerly known as “Ouseburn Unplugged” and was so popular, it sold out all three nights in 2010 and 2011 at the Newcastle Cluny.

Not only is Willy Mason headlining on Friday night but there will also be plenty of other talent, such as Lucy Rose, not to mention some newcomer, such as Ren Hervieu and Josh Kumra.

The real highlight of the “Communion Unplugged” event will be the performance of Tim Burgess and Mark Collins (The Charlatan Acoustic) on the Saturday night and as additional sweetener Tim Burgess will be reading from his recently published memoirs, which is already making a lot of positive noise. We can’t wait to hear that!

This event is a real addition to the Newcastle music scene. “Communion Unplugged” events are held worldwide, such as Brooklyn New York, Dublin, Glasgow and Leeds. This will certainly put Newcastle on the “music map”.

“This year the setting is in a fabulous disused warehouse on the banks of the Tyne, which really excited us”, comments North East gig promoter Steve Davis. “Local artists will also get their chance to shine with the likes of Hartlepool hero’s; The Jar Family, Ajimal, Natasha Haws, The Lake Poets, The Soviets, Motion Tourist and Amy Holford – all will be featuring alongside their idols”

There are still some tickets available from SDD Concerts:

Weekend Tickets are £25 and Day Tickets are £15.

Being part of these kind of events, is a real pleasure for the bar4hire team and we’ll get to listen to some great music at the same time!

Bar4hire travelled to South Perthshire, on the edge of the Highlands, last week to the tranquil Ayton House. Guests from as far as Australia celebrated a bespoke wedding in the relaxing surroundings of this 17 th century retreat. We were happy to be part of such a wonderful day and provide our wedding bar service.

What They Drank – Bollinger Champagne reception, followed by a wide selection from the bar .

What They Ate – Locally sourced Scottish fare, from rare roast Beef to indulgent fudge brownie with chocolate sauce.

What they said about us -

You guys were really awesome and totally surpassed our expectations – everybody commented on how friendly, helpful and professional you were. And we really appreciate your patience with our impromptu cocktail making!

Next time we need a bar around here, we’ll not hesitate to get in touch with you again.

Thanks so much for everything!

Bar4hire have announced they have won the tender process to provide the main bars at both prestigious food and drink festivals for 2012 in Tatton Park and Edinburgh.

The annual Foodies Festival will be on the move again this summer, bringing its eclectic mix of celebrity chefs, cookery classes, tasting sessions and artisan food stalls to seven venues around the country from Brighton to Edinburgh. Included in the line-up for 2012 at Tatton Park and Edinburgh is mobile bar entrepreneur Oliver Bennett with his bar4hire team.
The Foodies Festival is a celebration of local produce, world food and drink and cookery. Every event features highlights including a Chef’s Theatre with celebrity and Michelin-starred chefs doing live cookery demonstrations, Restaurant tents where some of the best restaurants in the country temporarily relocate to the festival grounds, cook schools for old and young, and market stalls showcasing the best of locally produced and world food and drinks.

Bar4hire will be bringing their Garden of Sweden mobile bar to the events at Tatton Park and Edinburgh, where they will be showcasing a fantastic new range of Swedish ciders as well as a Swedish lager.
Bar4hire owner Oliver Bennett was very excited to be involved in the event, commenting:
‘We have tendered for some larger events this year and are excited to be involved in such a high profile festival with a proven track record. It’s shaping up to be a good summer!’
Bar4hire will be serving Briska, a new premium Cider from Osterlen, known as the garden of Sweden. Pear, Apple and Pomegranate flavours will be on tap for thirsty patrons at the festival who it is hoped will be won over by the Cider’s less sweet and more natural, fresher presentation.
The Foodies Festival will be at Tatton Park in Cheshire from the 6th to the 8th of July and in Holyrood Park in Edinburgh from the 10th to the 12th of August, coinciding with the start of the Edinburgh Festival.
About Bar4hire
Bar4hire have been running a professional mobile bar hire service for the last 5 years. Their experience ranges from corporate product launches, functions, conferences, wedding bars and Christmas parties. They pride themselves on providing an impeccable service with first class staff, equipment and ingredients.

Bar4Hire have announced they will be providing a Pimm’s and Champagne bar and a Cocktail and Wine bar at this year’s prestigious

The Malton Food Lovers Festival – The Beer, Wine and Cider Festival 2012.

Malton has been hosting what has become one of the nation’s essential events for all food and drink lovers since 2009. Today, Bar4Hire announced that they have agreed a partnership to provide two bars at the The Malton Food Lovers Festival – The Beer, Wine and Cider Festival.

Bar4Hire will be bringing their unique mobile bar services to the festival to provide refreshments to the 20,000+ guest expected to attend the event. With celebrity chefs including Antonio Carluccio, Rosemary Shrager, Tom Parker Bowles, Matthew Fort and Andrew Pern cooking up some amazing dishes for visitors to taste, street food and producer stalls on hand, Bar4Hire are expecting a lot of thirsty patrons over the two-day event.

Bar4Hire have been running a professional mobile bar service for over 5 years and will bring their experience to the event to ensure that the service rises to the same standards of the food and drink on display. They will be providing two bars at the event to ensure that visitors are well catered for. One bar will be located at the West side of the Market Place serving Pimm’s and Champagne and the Milton Rooms will be hosting a mobile cocktail bar in their Traditional wine bar.

“We are really excited to be involved with the Malton food and drink festival by providing wine, cocktail and Pimm’s bars. It is a fantastic event which is renowned for top class food and drinks. It’s the first time cocktails have been on offer and we are sure they will go down very well!“ – Oliver Bennett, Owner at  Bar 4 Hire

The drinks range will reflect the summer nature of the event with drinks such as Mojito’s, Cosmopolitan’s, and a special Malton Rum punch on the menu as well as non-alcoholic options. Around 25 wines from around the world will also be available with tasting notes for each wine so you can read up before you savour their aroma and taste. Bar4Hire’s professional mixologists will also be on hand, giving cocktail tutorials so you can learn how to make the perfect Mojito at home.

The Malton Food and Wine festival, held every year since 2009 in the North Yorkshire market town, will include cookery demonstrations from local and celebrity chefs, street food stalls and producers’ stalls. It also plays host to the The Malton Beer, Wine and Cider festival in and around the Milton Rooms, supported by C.A.M.R.A (the campaign for real ale) and showcasing over 40 casks of real ale and cider and a wide selection of styles and vintages of wine. The festival will take place this year on the 19th and 20th of March, from 9am to 4pm both days. Entrance to the festival is free.

About Bar4Hire:
Bar4Hire have been running a professional mobile bar hire service for the last 5 years. Their experience ranges from corporate product launches, functions, conferences, wedding bars and Christmas parties. They pride themselves on providing an impeccable service with first class staff, equipment and ingredients.

Press Contact:

• Oliver Bennett
• Cheswick House
• Berwick-Upon-Tweed
• TD15 2RL
• Tel: 07816 302 013
• Email: info@bar4hire.com

http://www.bar4hire.com/

http://twitter.com/#!/mobilebar4hire

Planning a wedding typically involves setting out with the best of intentions, a sensible budget based on a good idea of what you want and what it is likely to cost. Then the costs spiral rapidly out of control as forgotten essentials get added to the list and the true cost of ‘wedding premiums’ rears its ugly head. But there are ways to slash costs and still create and amazing wedding day. We take a look at some of the biggest wedding expenses and how to get the best price for them.

The Wedding Dress
Designer wedding dresses can start at between £1,000 and £1,500 and, well, there’s no real upper limit to how much they might cost. But there are several ways to significantly reduce that cost and still look amazing on the day of the wedding.
Firstly, you could consider buying second hand. A lot of £1,000+ designer wedding dresses end up in second hand shops for a fraction of the price and you can discover some real finds by prowling the right second hand shops. Alternatively you could get a hand-me-down. Your mother’s wedding dress might be from an era of questionable taste but what about finding out if your grandmother still has her now vintage wedding gown for some serious class? If you must have new then a third option is to bypass the wedding premium and go for a non-wedding gown. Just because it isn’t from a wedding collection doesn’t mean a classic white dress can’t be pressed into service as a beautiful and modern wedding gown.

Catering
Catering typically works on a price-per-head basis. If you get married in the afternoon and then have a large evening reception be prepared to spend a large chunk of your budget on a meal for your day guests and then an additional buffet to accommodate hungry evening ravers. And expect a hefty wedding premium to be slapped on top of the typical amount you’d expect to pay for similar fare.
The first thing to consider is attacking guest numbers. The sit-down meal is going to be the most expensive part of this equation so think seriously about whether there is anybody who can be moved over to the evening party-only roster, or cut from the guest list altogether. To avoid offense, try to cut categories rather than individuals – inviting all of your cousins except that one you don’t really see much of isn’t the most politically savvy idea, but cutting all work-colleagues from the day ceremony and keeping it exclusively family and childhood friends will help avoid anyone feeling jilted. You could also plan the wedding ceremony for the morning instead of the afternoon – a sit-down lunch is likely to cost less than a full dinner.

Drinks
The cost of drinks can sometimes come as a surprise especially when you come to the realisation that your budget will only stretch as far as a miserly one glass of champagne per guest and table water for the meal. There are several savvy ways to bring these costs down and still let the cheer flow.

Let’s assume you’ve already exercised the guest culling measures already mentioned and consider additional alternatives. Firstly, a good cava or Prosecco is often nicer than cheap champagne and usually easier for unaccustomed palates, so unless your guests are seasoned champagne guzzlers, give serious consideration to the more cost effective and easier to enjoy bubbly. Expect the caterers or wedding venues to over-charge on the table wine and instead plan to supply your own wine and negotiate a corkage cost with them. Finally, whether you plan on providing free drinks for the reception or will have a cash bar carefully compare the venue’s bar prices with a mobile wedding bar. Not only are they more likely to be able to cater to your guests’ varied drinks tastes but the per-head or cash-bar costs are often cheaper than most wedding venues’. They may even be able to provide a package price which includes drinks reception and wedding breakfast wines along with a cash bar for the evening at a significantly lower rate than a venue or caterers costs.

Stationery
Sending out party invitations doesn’t seem like it would cost that much, but wedding stationery is so much more than that. Date for your Diary cards, the actual invitation, RSVP cards, Menus, Order of Service, Place Name Cards, Seating Plans, Thank You cards and more can mount up. Get custom designed, handmade stationery and add on the personalisation costs (i.e. getting them all named and addressed), not to mention all those stamps, and the wedding stationery can see you set back by hundreds of pounds.

Again, we’ll assume that you’ve culled the guest list by as much as you can by now, so the main option left for reducing wedding stationery costs is to cut the amount of paid labour involved. If you don’t need handmade, original designs look for pre-printed wedding stationery packages. Instead of getting them personalised with your names and the names and addresses of each guest, try to find ones which are blank and fill them in by hand yourself. Alternatively, if you do want handmade then get out your craft knife and do it all yourself. Craft shops have a plethora of material for making your own wedding stationery. Many of them will also have simple printing facilities as well to print the necessary text on the cards. Just remember that this can be very time consuming so leave yourself plenty of time to make and/or name and address all the invitations you need to send out.

Venue
Wedding venues are the flagship culprits for charging a premium just because they are catering to a wedding, but there are ways to beat even them. Firstly, get that guest list out again, are you sure you’ve cut out absolutely everybody? A smaller guest list, even if it’s just for the wedding ceremony, can lead to a smaller venue and significant savings. If you can trim it right down to just your bridal party then you might even be able to afford to fly everyone abroad and have a small but memorable wedding somewhere in the sun.
If your list is as small as it’s going to get and you still can’t afford to take everybody to the Bahamas then the first thing to look at is the venue for the ceremony. Find somewhere that has the appropriate capacity for your guests, no point in spending money on empty pews. Consider the church, synagogue or mosque etc. your family attends if they have one, being members might mean they waive the usual fee and it will also have sentimental significance. If you aren’t planning a religious ceremony then your local council will have civil reception venues that are relatively inexpensive but still attractive. Choosing to hold your wedding ‘off-peak’ (i.e. outside of the popular May-August period) or during a weekday may also help you secure a lower booking cost.

Alternatively you could consider finding a venue which can be licensed for wedding ceremonies and will also serve for the reception, this way you should see an overall reduction in the booking cost (one venue for the day rather than two) and also not have to worry about the cost of transporting the wedding party from one venue to the other. You may even want to consider finding a non-traditional venue which isn’t geared up for doing weddings as they are less likely to pull out a marked-up weddings pricelist at the first mention of nuptials. Services such as mobile bars can also be a big help here in turning just about any venue into a memorable wedding venue.

Entertainment
Entertainment is a very individual taste but one thing which is probably universal to weddings is avoiding ‘dead air’, moments during the day where there isn’t at least background music in between ceremonies and speeches. It’s perfectly possible to hire a string quartet to usher guests into the ceremony, play the bride down the aisle and provide background music during the meal and drinks reception before handing the stage over to a 10 piece Jive band but all those people will need paid. Consider the venue, your priorities and your personal preferences. Background music could be provided by an MP3 player over the venue’s audio, even the bridal chorus needn’t be performed live – will any of your guests actually notice the absence of a live string quartet?

Likewise, you might want to splash out for a live band for the evening depending on your personal preferences but even if you do you might only want them for part of the evening and then replace by a DJ later on. Speaking of DJs, these days they needn’t be the type that brings along an expensive set-up of massive speakers, mixing boards and multiple CD and record decks needing a van to transport it. More cost-effective DJs can put together a playlist on an MP3 player and set up with nothing but that and mobile speakers – same music but less cost and clutter.

Bar4hire provided a 4 m stainless steel bar unit and fridges for a corporate Christmas party at the Baltic Mill Centre for Contemporary Art on the 10th of December 2011.

We also provided a flair bartender for a celebrity birthday in the main bar which was decked out with ice bar, led furniture, Snaparazzi photo booth.

Bar4hire are developing their brand management work and have set up Liquid Activation to specialise in drinks marketing and brand work and licensed trade consultancy.

Liquid Activation provided a bar, promotional staff and cocktail bartenders to run a Experiential Agwa and Monster Energy bar on at City Vaults as part of Orchid groups head office celebrations. Even Santa got involved!

Look out for updated pages on Liquid Activations drinks marketing work.

Even though it’s starting to get chilly and you prefer to be sitting at home and enjoying a glass of mulled wine, you might need to organise a party next year?

Bar4hire now have a Capri marquee available for events next year, perfect for private parties or festival VIP bars. It can comfortably accommodate 100 people standing 80 seated.

Why not get in touch and we can talk about your event requirements?

On the 30th July 2011, we provided a wedding bar at Slaley Hall in Northumberland. Probably the largest wedding we have catered for yet with over almost 400 guests! Within a huge marquee on the grounds of Slaley Hall we were very happy to be asked to contribute to this fantastic day for the happy couple.

Bar4hire provided a full bar service for Urban Niche and Glendale Capital on the 24th June 2011.  Everyone enjoyed a day of French Boules and drinks. With over 300 corporate clients attending, the event eventually raise over £6,000 for charity.

Bar4Hire were happy to be part of this exciting and successful Charity event.