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Alcohol
I've plotted BOLS Recommended cocktails on taste axes of sweet/sour and strong/weak: in order to do this, I've specified as much as possible which liquor and liqueurs to use, as well as stressing the need for freshly squeezed juices and decent quality sodas. If you use different liquors or liqueurs than the brands mentioned in the BOLS Recommended recipes, the drinks won't taste as indicated. In any case, the taste axes reflect my own taste - yours is almost certainly different.
Most of the brands specified are from the Rémy-Cointreau company (which owns BOLS) or the distribution network in which Rémy-Cointreau is a partner, Maxxium. The brands of Rémy-Cointreau and Maxxium are well-known, globally available, of high quality and committed to quality cocktails in bars everywhere. I'm very familiar with all these brands, and I recommend them to you.
In the cases where I haven't recommended a specific brand, try to choose one in the middle range. With tequila, for example, don't buy anything in a bottle decorated with plastic sombreros or a bright purple cactus. What you want with liquors is decent, forthright quality: the majority of cocktails need a base liquor that has "legs", meaning a strong enough flavour to emerge, tamed and modified, after the drink has been mixed. So don't buy rubbish, but also don't buy super-expensive single-malts and XO cognacs either: such top-shelf stuff typically has a fragile, delicate flavour easily lost in most cocktails. You can make cocktails with XO or single malt, but you've really got to be at the top of your game, so to speak.
Juices
You absolutely, absolutely have to use only freshly-squeezed lemon and lime juices. There is no substitute. Bottled juices are usually either too sweet or too sour. Premixes like Sweet 'n'Sour (usually 2 parts freshly squeezed lemon juice to 1 part sugar syrup) can be useful for busy bars with high volume and unskilled bartenders if you use fresh juice, but premixes can never credibly replace fresh citrus juices. Put freshly squeezed lemon and lime juice in empty, clean liquor bottles with Spill Stop MP 285-50 pourspouts on them: you need to be far more accurate with these juices than you do with others like tomato, cranberry, apple and pineapple, which can go into regular Store 'n' Pour containers.
Most commercial "fresh" brands of tomato, cranberry, apple and pineapple juice are not too bad, and it's extremely difficult to produce those juices yourself anyway. Beware of sweetened pineapple juice or pineapple juice containing soy substitute. All cranberry juice is sweetened (that's why it's frequently labelled Cranberry Cocktail): just choose the brand with the highest juice content. Freshly squeezed juices only last about 24 hours once they've been squeezed, commercial juices maybe 48 hours after they've been opened, and they typically taste much sourer on the second or third day. Try to use up all your juices each night, even if it means hand-squeezing for the last hour or so of service. If you have to keep them overnight, refrigerate them in clean airtight containers.
Sodas
For all carbonated drinks, small sealed containers like cans or bottles are much to be preferred over the bag-in-box soda gun system. The reason is, sodaguns have up to 10 products attached, and each product needs a different degree of carbonation to be served well - but the sodagun can only be set up for one carbonation level. Additionally, the mix of syrup concentrate to water is frequently set incorrectly. Ideally, use airline-size cans or bottles, or at least the 330ml size, and throw opened ones away frequently - no point ruining an $8 drink for the sake of a 50 cent soda. Use decent brands: Schweppes is synonymous with tonic water, as are Pepsi and Coca-Cola with cola. Don't get ginger ale confused with ginger beer.
Hygiene
Always wash your hands before touching fruit or a straw (tip: wash your equipment before you garnish the drink and hand it over, and you're killing two birds with one stone: efficient and hygienic). If you have the habits of running your hands through your hair, smoking behind the bar or biting your fingernails - get out of the habit.
Ingredient fruit
Use the freshest you can get, and wash it before you use it. Individual fruits may differ in flavour: not every lime or lemon tastes the same, for instance, so for drinks where you muddle fruit (like caipirinhas), taste the drink as you go. If you juice 20 lemons to make lemon juice, however, there's no need to worry, because any inconsistencies in taste will be smoothed out across the liter or so of juice produced.
Certain fruits (like blackberries) are very expensive and very different out of season: small, sour and tasteless. It's hardly worth using them then; much better to have a seasonal cocktail list that reflects the best of what's available and of good quality, like good chefs do. If you really must, frozen fruits of reasonable quality can be had.
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Garnish fruit
Don't cut it until you have to, and try not to keep it overnight. If you do want to cut in advance, rinse and then drain the fruit slices before you store them in airtight boxes under refrigeration: by rinsing them, you remove the citric acid, which makes the fruit go bad quicker. Don't store fruit in water or under icecubes overnight: it just gets slimy, watery and tasteless. Similarly, if you really must keep fruit overnight, rinse it again, drain off the water again and store it airtight under refrigeration. Don't cut twists or zests in advance: it's pointless. The whole idea of a zest is to spray essential oils from the skin of the fruit over the drink; if you cut in advance, the zest dries up, leaving little to spray on your drink. Store olives and cherries in the liquid in which they come or (luxury option, this) some gin or vodka (olives) or bourbon (cherries), which you could then use in a drink. A great garnish won't save a crappy drink, but a crappy garnish will completely ruin a fantastic drink.
Puree fruit
If you want to make a puree, just peel the fruit, remove any stalk, leaves, stones or pips, and liquefy it in a blender (no ice), adding a little sugar syrup if the fruit is unripe or if it isn't liquefying well. Fresh purees only have a 1-day shelflife: it's not worth keeping them overnight. To make a small amount of a puree, just muddle some of the fruit in the bottom of a shaker.
Ice
Use lots, and don't be shy. Good drinkmaking ice comes in nice big cubes, say 28mm x 28mm x 32mm. Never scoop it with your hands or anything made of glass. Never re-use ice you've already stirred or shaken with. If you're shaking or straining over ice, always shake or strain over fresh ice, not the ice in the shaker or Boston. Store your ice in a nice big icewell with a drain. If you have to keep it in an ice-bucket, make sure the bucket is big enough to use an ice-scoop with, and drain off melted water frequently. Some guests may complain if they think there is too much ice in their drink. In fact a drink served in a glass full of ice stays colder longer so the ice melts much more slowly. A drink served with just a cube or two of ice will be almost instantly watered down, as the ice melts almost immediately. If you're going to be making a high volume of drinks using crushed ice, get an industrial, electric ice-crusher instead of a hand-cranked one: life's too short.
Sugar
Present in so many recipes, I've used plain white granular sugar unless otherwise indicated. A nice option, especially for drinks from the Caribbean and South America, is to use soft brown sugar. For sugar syrup, all the drinks in the database used 2:1 sugar syrup, a common ratio in Europe and Australasia: 2 parts sugar dissolved completely into 1 part boiling hot water. If you dissolve 2 cupfuls of plain white granular sugar into 1 cupful of boiling hot water, you get just over 2 cupfuls of sugar syrup, which will stay good almost indefinitely if you refrigerate it overnight. Refrigeration also thins the syrup a little, making it less thick and viscous and easier to pour. A very quick way to make your syrup is to put the sugar and hot water into a blender (no ice, of course!) and run the motor for about thirty seconds - the sugar dissolves instantly.
The other common ratio for sugar syrup (especially in the US) is 1:1. Commercially available sugar syrups are sometimes called simple syrup. Gomme or gum syrup is not the same as sugar syrup: it's frequently flavoured, and (should) be made using a base of sugar syrup to which gum Arabic and/or glycerin is added. There are many flavoured sugar syrups, and it's interesting to use an appropriate one instead of "straight" sugar syrup in many cocktails.
Measurements
All the recipes are given in shots, which is the same as using the expression "parts". This means that each recipe is already written in it's correct proportions, so you can easily adjust it to the "house pour" your bar uses for cocktails. You can switch between viewing a recipe in shots or millilitres (ml).
Most bartenders equate 1 shot with either 25ml or 30ml, 30ml (actually 29.6ml) being 1 American ounce (oz.). Feel free to use any amount you like as 1 shot. I used 30ml. In fact, it doesn't much matter what you choose as "1 shot" so long as you keep to the same proportions shown in the recipe. Resist the temptation to make super-large super-strong drinks to fill up oversized (more than 5oz) martini/cocktail glasses: the drink will get warm too quickly (and you may get drunk too quickly, also).
Other measurements, such as dashes and barspoons are based on standard ingredients and equipment. Barspoons around the whole world are almost identical, and bitters almost always come in bottles with the same size hole (about 1 millimeter wide) from which you can dash the contents. For drinks calling for a dash of alcohol, syrup, juice or the like, I've assumed the alcohol/syrup/lemon juice/lime juice is in a bottle topped with a 285-P pourspout, the world standard, and that the bottle is inverted just long enough for a drop or two of liquid to fall out before being righted again. For other juices, I've assumed the juice is in a standard 1-liter Store 'n'Pour container and was inverted just long enough for a drop or two of liquid to fall out before being righted again. The measurements teaspoon (tsp) and tablespoon (tbsp) are universal.
Great drinks require accuracy. Use a liquor measure, what some call a jigger, if you haven't been extensively trained to freepour using an Exacto-Pour system. Make sure your jigger is in fact accurate: government-stamped versions are the best. Many jiggers are produced without any accuracy check in the same kinds of factories that produce novelty china dogs and keyrings: how accurate do you think they are?
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