HOW MUCH ICE DO YOU REALLY NEED?

Start with a simple rule

For drinks, begin with about one 10-pound bag for every four guests over a few hours. Forty people? Ten bags to start. A hundred? Around twenty-five. Write that number down — but understand it's your floor, not your answer. Down here, you adjust up for the things that really melt ice.

The sun does most of the damage

A cooler sitting in direct sun melts roughly twice as fast as one in the shade. It's not the party that kills your ice — it's the afternoon. If you're set up in the yard, on the beach, or under a tent with the midday sun on it, add 30–50% on top of your starting number and don't think twice. Then do the free stuff: keep the coolers in the shade, lids shut, and up off the hot concrete on a piece of board or a crate. That alone buys you an hour or two.

Inside and outside are two different parties

A cooled hall or an evening lime indoors? You can stay close to the base number — the room is working with you. A daytime cookout in the yard in June or July? The room is working against you, hard. Same headcount, completely different ice bill. When in doubt about an outdoor daytime event, buy like it's hotter than you think, because it is.

Warm liquor drinks the most ice of all

This is the one everybody forgets. If your drinks turn up warm — white rum straight from the wholesale, cases of beer off the shelf, two-litres from the shop — your ice now has two jobs: chill everything down first, then keep it cold. That first job is brutal. Bringing a warm case of beer down to cold can swallow a whole bag on its own.

The cheapest fix there is: buy your drinks already cold, or stick them in the fridge the night before. Do that and you'll cut your ice almost in half. Can't manage it? Then add another 50% and make peace with it — warm drinks and a short ice supply is how a good fete turns into a warm one.

Let's do a real one

Sunday cookout. Fifty people. In the yard, midday sun. Drinks bought warm that morning. Start at thirteen bags (fifty divided by four). Bump it for the sun. Bump it again for the warm drinks. You're now looking at roughly double — call it twenty-five bags, not thirteen. Buy twenty-five, keep the coolers shaded, and you've got cold drinks right into the evening, with a little left for the food cooler.

A few things people miss

• The food cooler is separate. Fish, jerk, drinks on ice for the cook — that's its own ice. Count it apart from the drinks.
• All-day event? Don't buy it all at 8 a.m. to watch it melt by noon. A party bin holds the equivalent of dozens of bags and stays cold for the long haul — or schedule a top-up later in the day.
• Round up, every time. Ice is cheap. Warm drinks at your own party are not. One bag over beats one bag short.

Or just let us do the math

If you'd rather not run numbers in your head while you're planning everything else, our ice calculator does it for you — tell it your guest count and it tells you how many bags, or which bin makes more sense. And once you cross fifty bags, delivery is free anywhere in Kingston, St. Andrew, Portmore & Spanish Town.