A foldable tiered bar display

Need some portable pizazz for your bar? Here’s how to build foldable, LED-lit bar displays, for 10 to 15 bottles.

I made these when it was my turn to help organize the bar tent at the local town fair. When I helped out the previous year, bottles were just standing on the bartop, making them hard to locate in the dim light, easy to knock over and it just didn’t look like cocktails! Truth to be told, it’s more of a Whiskey and Coke affair anyway, but a little style can’t hurt, right?

I chose simple coated plywood and a foldable design so these could take some abuse and be stored flat in a cellar until next year. I drew plans in SketchUp

The design is simple boards and comes together with rabbets, hinges and some screws. I ordered the boards pre-cut to size and used a table saw for the straight rabbets:

The only slightly complex pieces are the end pieces that need multiple connecting rabbets. I decided to try using an X-Carve at a makerspace for these and immediately made some beginner mistakes with that (note the mauled clamp and broken bit? ;). But the design is simple enough that you should be able to put it together with only a router, too.

I decided to install hinges for the end pieces, so assembly is simply folding those up, inserting three boards and screwing the front and back wall in place to hold it all together. With knurled nuts they can be assembed and disassembled without tools.

I think I ended up also cutting shallow rabbets into the middle wall to prevent the boards from sagging (not shown on the plans) and installing some LED lighting (more rabbets with simple LED strips). And voila, a sturdy, foldable bar display adding a little style to your next soccer club gathering or town fair.

If you want to build your own, feel free to use the idea or SketchUp plans, which I’m making available under the CC BY 4.0 license.