Stations
Six stations, six situations
A drink station is not a shopping list — it is an arrangement. Where the ice sits relative to the glasses decides whether anyone uses the thing twice. Each page below lays out the zones in order, names the kit, and says plainly which popular purchases are a waste for that particular station.
DAILY STATION
The Everyday Coffee & Foam Corner
One or two people, every morning, on a run of counter next to the kettle or the machine. The test for this station is not how it photographs on a Sunday — it is whether it still works at ten to seven on a Tuesday when you have not properly opened your eyes. Everything on it earns its place by being reachable without moving something else first.
- Counter
- 3 sq ft of counter
- Serves
- 1–2 people, daily
WARM WEATHER
The Summer Iced-Drink Station
For the months when nobody wants anything hot and the kitchen sees four or five drinks an afternoon. This station is organized around one fact: ice is the heaviest, fastest-disappearing thing on it, so everything else is arranged around where the ice lives. Built well, it turns an iced drink into a ninety-second job.
- Counter
- 4 sq ft of counter plus one freezer drawer
- Serves
- 2–6 people across an afternoon
HOSTING
A Drinks Station That Serves Twenty
Twenty people, three or four hours, and one person who would like to spend some of that time as a guest. The whole design goal here is that nobody has to ask you anything: the station has to be legible from six feet away, and it has to survive twenty people touching it without needing you to reset it every ten minutes.
- Counter
- A 6 ft table, or two 3 ft sections
- Serves
- 20 people across 3–4 hours
TIGHT SPACE
The Small-Apartment Drink Cart
For a kitchen where the counter is already fully committed and there is no third of a meter to give up. A two-tier cart on wheels borrows floor space instead of counter space, and it can be pushed against a wall when the room needs to be a room again. The constraint is real, so the rule is one job per item.
- Counter
- A 2-tier cart, roughly 16 × 30 in of floor
- Serves
- 1–3 people
GUESTS
The Zero-Proof Table for Guests
A table set up so that a guest who is not drinking gets something made with the same care as everything else in the room, and does not have to explain themselves to get it. That is a design problem more than a recipe problem: the table has to read as deliberate rather than as an accommodation, which means real glassware, real garnish, and drinks that were designed as themselves.
- Counter
- A 4 ft side table
- Serves
- 8–12 guests
UPKEEP
The Cleanup and Drying End of the Bar
The end of the counter nobody plans and everybody needs. A drink station generates wet glassware, wet tools and standing water, and if there is no designated place for those things they colonize the working surface within a week. This is the smallest station on the site and the one that determines whether the other five stay usable.
- Counter
- 18 × 24 in beside the sink
- Serves
- Supports any of the other five stations