Services

Bartenders and Cocktail Staff in Los Angeles, California

We provide bartenders, cocktail servers, and cigarette girls for private parties, corporate events, and fundraisers across California, from our base in Los Angeles. You can book bar staff on their own or add them to a casino night with tables and dealers. Every event is quoted individually, so call (866) 963-6557 or send us the details and we will price it for your headcount and hours.

When you actually need bar staff

The moment you stop being able to greet guests because you are opening wine, you needed a bartender. That usually happens somewhere around 25 to 30 people, though the real trigger is not headcount, it is whether you want to host or work.

The events where bar staff make the biggest difference:

• Home parties in a house not built for it. A kitchen island becomes a bar, and one person keeps it clean, stocked, and moving instead of leaving a wet counter and a pile of cups.
• Corporate events and holiday parties. Having a trained professional pouring gives you control over service and a clear point of contact when the room is full of employees and clients.
• Casino nights. Guests at a blackjack table do not want to leave their seats. Cocktail servers working the floor keep people playing, and the room stays energized instead of clumping at the bar.
• Fundraisers and galas. Long timelines, program moments, silent auction tables. You need staff who can read a room and pull back during the speeches.
• Venue events with a rented space and no in-house team. Plenty of Los Angeles venues hand you a beautiful empty room and nothing else.

Cocktail servers and cigarette girls are worth mentioning separately. They circulate. That is a different job from standing behind a bar, and at a casino party it is the difference between guests who feel taken care of and guests who feel like they are queueing.

How the job runs, start to finish

Before the event. We talk through your guest count, your timeline, the venue, and what is already handled. Some hosts have a full bar, glassware, and a delivery arriving that morning. Others have a folding table and a plan. Tell us which one you are, because it changes how many people you need and how early they should arrive. If you are also booking a casino night, we sort the dealers and event staff at the same time so everyone arrives on one schedule.

Arrival and setup. Staff arrive ahead of your start time to build the bar: ice, garnish, glassware, cutting fruit, laying out the station so service moves quickly. A bar that is set up properly pours twice as fast all night. This is the part guests never see and always feel.

Service. Bartenders work the station. Cocktail servers work the floor, clearing empties as they go, which is the unglamorous half of the job and the reason the room still looks good at hour three. At a casino party, servers learn the table layout early so they can reach players without cutting across a game in progress.

Breakdown. Bar is broken down, surfaces wiped, trash consolidated, leftover product left where you can find it. You should be able to walk into that room the next morning without dread.

How long it takes

Setup is typically the hour before doors, sometimes more if the bar is being built from nothing or the venue has a long load-in. Breakdown is faster than setup, usually well under an hour.

Service time is whatever your event runs. Most private parties and corporate evenings land in the four to five hour range, and casino nights often run three to four hours of table play with a bar open a little longer on either side. Fundraisers run longer because of programming.

When you ask us for a quote, give us your start and end times rather than a guess at total hours. We will tell you what setup and breakdown add on top.

What it costs and what moves the price

We quote every event individually, so there is no rate card here. What we can tell you is exactly what moves the number, so you can shape the budget before you call.

Number of staff. Driven by guest count and by how you want the bar to work. One busy station moves slower than two lighter ones. If you want no line at any point, that costs more than a bar that occasionally has three people waiting.

Hours. Setup, service, and breakdown. Adding an hour of service at the end of the night is one of the cheaper upgrades. Adding two bartenders is not.

Roles. Bartenders, cocktail servers, and cigarette girls are different jobs and get staffed differently. A room with floor service needs more bodies than a room where everyone walks to the bar.

Venue and travel. We travel throughout California from Los Angeles. Distance, parking, load-in difficulty, and stairs all factor in. A rooftop with a service elevator and a strict load-in window is a different job from a backyard in Sherman Oaks.

Timing. Weekend evenings and December are the busiest windows in this city. Early bookings give you more room on staffing.

Bundling. Booking bar staff alongside casino tables is usually more efficient than sourcing them separately, because one team arrives, one schedule, one point of contact.

Alcohol, glassware, and the bar itself vary by event and venue. Tell us what you already have and we will tell you what is still missing.

What to look for in whoever you hire

Ask about insurance. We carry event liability insurance, and any company you consider should be able to answer that question in one sentence without going to look for a document.

Ask who is actually showing up. Some companies post a job to a gig app the week of your event. Our staff are hired and trained in house. We have been doing this since 2006, owned and staffed entirely by women, and the people who arrive at your event are our people.

Ask how they handle the parts of the night nobody plans for: the guest who has had enough, the delivery that shows up late, the venue that moves the bar twenty minutes before doors. Experience shows up in those moments, not in the cocktail menu.

Ask what they need from you in writing. A good answer is specific: guest count, timeline, address, load-in details, what product will be on site. A vague answer now means confusion on the day.

We have staffed events for Red Bull, SpaceX, Macy's, Bombay Sapphire, and the Hollywood Roosevelt, along with hundreds of California charity fundraisers. Send us your date and we will put together a plan.