Drinks for iftar
and sehri.

Almost every iftar table in Pakistan lands on the same shape: dates first, then something cold, then the fried things, then the proper meal. The cold part is where most of the planning goes wrong, because it is the one thing you cannot make at the last minute for twenty people.

The usual line-up, and what each is actually for:

• Water - the only thing that properly rehydrates you. Everything below is in addition to it, never instead of it.
• Dates - tradition, and they are quick sugar after a long day.
• A fruit drink - cold, sweet and familiar. This is the part people look forward to, and the part that runs out first.
• Rooh Afza or a milk drink - if your family has always had it, it stays.
• Something salty - lassi or a salted drink, especially in the hotter weeks.

The question that actually matters. A glass at iftar is roughly 200 ml and most people have one or two, so the maths is simple: count your people, multiply by two glasses, divide by the bottle size.

Gathering	Glasses a night	Roughly
Household of 6	~12	2 × 1000 ml a night
Extended family, 15	~30	6 × 1000 ml a night
40 people	~80	16 × 1000 ml a night
Mosque or community, 100	~200	40 × 1000 ml a night

A bundle is 6 × 1000 ml, 12 × 500 ml or 20 × 250 ml. For a household, one 1000 ml bundle covers about three nights. Above roughly forty people a night you are into trade pricing, which starts at 35 bundles - that is covered in bulk ordering.

Why 250 ml usually wins for mosques

For community iftars the small bottles are normally the better buy even though they cost more per litre. Nobody has to pour, nothing is shared, and there is no half-full jug standing at the end of the night. Twenty bottles to a bundle.

A fridge will not cool twenty warm bottles between asr and maghrib. This is the most common Ramadan mistake and it is entirely avoidable.

• Start the night before. Load the fridge after taraweeh for the next evening, not on the afternoon itself.
• Use a cooler for the overflow. Bottles in ice and water chill in about forty minutes - far faster than ice alone, which barely touches them.
• Shake before pouring. Real fruit settles. It says so on the label, and it matters most in bottles that have been standing a few days.
• Pour cold rather than over ice. Ice waters it down and on a hot evening people notice.

Once a bottle is open, refrigerate it and drink it within four days. During Ramadan an open bottle rarely survives the night anyway.

Iftar is about relief. Sehri is about not being thirsty at two in the afternoon, and that comes down mostly to water and to what you eat, not to what you drink alongside it.

If a cold fruit drink is what gets a teenager to actually eat sehri, it is doing a useful job. Keep the glass small, keep water next to it, and treat it as part of the meal rather than as the hydration plan. We sell the stuff and we would still rather say that than not.

The week before Ramadan is the busiest of our year and the first week of it is busier still. Two things that genuinely help:

• Order about ten days ahead if you want a particular flavour mix. Single-flavour bundles go first, mango soonest.
• Ask for a standing order rather than reordering each week. Tell us on the confirmation call and we schedule the whole month once.

Delivery is standard to Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Multan, and any other city is arranged on the call. Orders are cash on delivery and nothing is taken online. There is more in how delivery works.