Four syrups. That's all a cocktail menu needs if you build the menu around the syrups instead of building the syrups around the menu.
Most bars do it backwards. They design eight cocktails, then realize each one needs a different sweetener, and now they have eight syrups with different shelf lives and prep schedules that nobody can track. The bar cart looks like a pastry kitchen. The Sunday prep block turns into three hours and still doesn't account for the hibiscus-rosemary situation from the spring menu that somehow never got retired.
Simple (1:1 sugar to water). The universal sweetener. Goes in everything where you want sweetness without character. Bright, clean, easy to adjust in proportion. Shelf life of 2 to 3 weeks refrigerated, longer if you add a small amount of high-proof spirit to the batch.
Demerara (1:1 or 2:1 demerara sugar to water). Adds a molasses-adjacent richness that reads well in whiskey and rum cocktails, and anywhere you want a rounder sweetness. The 2:1 ratio gives you more intensity and a longer shelf life, but watch the texture at cold temperatures. It can get thick enough to cause pours to run long.
Honey (3:1 honey to water). Diluted enough to pour cleanly but concentrated enough to contribute real flavor. Honey straight from the bottle is too viscous and doesn't mix properly at cocktail temperatures. The 3:1 ratio is the working standard. Shelf life of about 2 weeks refrigerated.
Ginger (fresh ginger syrup). The one that does the most work across the most categories. A fresh ginger syrup made at 1:1 with pressed ginger juice covers highball drinks, spritzes, tropical builds, and supplements sour cocktails. Shelf life is shorter, 5 to 7 days, which means it gets made twice a week instead of once.
Make simple and demerara on Sunday. Both hold through the week. Make honey on Sunday and midweek if volume requires it. Make ginger syrup Sunday and Wednesday.
Storage: labeled containers, date marked, stored at or below 40 degrees. One person owns the syrup program per week. Rotating the responsibility keeps the knowledge distributed and eliminates the single point of failure where one person calls out sick and nobody knows which container is which.
If a new cocktail can't be built with one of these four syrups plus the spirits program you already have, it probably doesn't belong on the menu. That's the discipline the four-syrup constraint enforces, and it makes the program easier to run as well as easier to train.