Horeca glasses

Start with beer, because that is where the volume is. The 19 cl fluitje is the small glass for a quick drink and for guests who would rather have two cold beers than one lukewarm one. The vaasje is the standard and comes in two sizes: 29 cl for a 25 cl pour with foam, and 34 cl if you want to serve more generously. If you keep both, you can offer a small and a large beer without buying a third shape. The beer glasses give the full overview, and the straight models are with the pilsner glasses.

You also need two glasses that catch everything that is not beer. In the Netherlands the 21 cl spatje is the glass for jenever with water and for a small soft drink. For cola, tonic and mixers you reach for a 27 cl long drink glass, and for spirits in one go a 3.5 cl bostonshot from the shot glasses. Look out for tempered glass there: it is thicker at the rim and survives being knocked against the tap.

You pull a pilsner into a cold, wet glass. Rinse the glass under the tap, hold it at an angle under the spout and only bring it upright when it is three quarters full, so the head of about two centimetres forms in one go. A glass with grease residue from a full dishwasher will let the foam collapse within half a minute, so rinse once too often rather than once too few.

The kopstoot is why the spatje and the fluitje stand side by side on the bar: a vaasje of pilsner with a small glass of young jenever next to it, filled to the brim and sipped with your hands behind your back. For mixed drinks you work from the same long drink and tumbler glasses as at home, but with a bar set that stays within reach all evening instead of in a drawer.

Hospitality glasses go into a glasswasher on a short two to three minute programme with a hot final rinse, so they can go onto the bar dry without polishing. Use a glass cleaner without rinse aid, because that leaves a film on which beer foam collapses. Descale the machine regularly, because limescale eventually makes glass dull and that cannot be undone.

Breakage happens mostly in the basket and in the cupboard, not while serving. Place glasses apart from each other, stack only what is made for it and keep half a box of every size in reserve. Because these are fixed, continuing ranges, you can reorder without the shape on the table changing.

If your menu goes beyond beer and soft drinks, the glassware for that is elsewhere in the shop. For mixed drinks, look at the cocktail glasses, where the coupes, tumblers and hurricanes are ready by the set. If a cocktail list comes with it, you need tools that survive a busy shift: the cocktail shakers are grouped together, along with bar spoons, jiggers and strainers. If you are looking for wine bowls, coffee glasses or amuse glasses of the same quality, you will find them by glass type in the menu alongside, each type with its capacities listed. And if you work with fixed boxes per size, a business account is handy, because your order history is kept and you can repeat a size in one go.