I really wanted a beverage fridge when we were choosing appliances for our new home build a couple years ago. Discovered they were very costly, and the reviews were horrific. We ended up choosing a french door fridge that has the extra external pull out shelf underneath the doors (above the bottom freezer). Love it! Use it exclusively for beverages. Then chose a simple inexpensive top freezer fridge to store in garage with no ice maker so freezer portion is as large as standalones. Tall beverages fit well in fridge section. Just throwing out other outside the box ideas. HTH

Built in refrigerators are very expensive. There are no inexpensive solutions for built in.

If you're not going that route there are brands like Marvel and others. Some of these can look built in. Price also depends on whether you have zones and want to store wine plus drinks or just wine.

Here's a link to the AJ Madison under counter fridge offerings.

One thing to keep in mind is noise. The less expensive the fridge, the noisier it'll be.

I agree that the biggest cost savings will be to avoid built-ins. For your bar, you can put in a free standing bar fridge in a space made to accommodate it. You can add some trim to make it look really nice. Some can also be placed behind doors. That might or might not save on costs depending on how deep your cabinets are (if they'll be deep enough without adding expense) and the price of the door vs. panels vs. built-in stainless. You do need some air venting, so check the specs, but you can probably just have a on the bottom edge for that.

Definitely, if you have room for at least a small fridge in the basement, like an "apartment sized" one, or even a full sized one which could accommodate overflow for a big party (or just deli platters), it will save you a lot of money. You can get that at the big box store. :)

We purchased an expensive bev fridge and it was still noisy. Ended up returning it. I gave up and will just use the regular fridge and outside fridge