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MOST men and women standing at a bar have the option of staring at the rows of bottles stacked behind it or craning to watch a TV set in a dim corner. Now Bronwen Corp., a brokerage house in Washington, D.C., has opened a restaurant called the Exchange, where a dedicated drinker can down his martini while watching stock market quotations flicker past his eyes on an 8-ft.-wide illuminated Ultronic Systems quote board in back of the bar. Says Harry Hagerty, one of three young partners in Bronwen: "I've always felt that the man interested in watching stock prices ought to have a place more convivial for his habit."

The three partners hope to franchise ticker-equipped restaurants patterned after the Exchange. When the trio first asked the New York Stock Exchange to let them have a barroom ticker installed, they were turned down because they wanted instantaneous quotes, and the Big Board restricts that service to brokers or people whose principal business is investment. Eventually the partners agreed that stock prices would appear 15 minutes behind brokerage-house tickers, as they do on television. The time lag has not stopped some customers from trading at the bar over the free telephones provided by the house.

While Bronwen tries to launch its ticker-restaurant franchise, Trans-Lux Corp., a manufacturer of ticker display units, has been signing up nonbrokerage-house locations all over North America. Quote boards were recently installed in the cocktail lounge of the Four Seasons hotel in Toronto and in the lobby of a new office building in Washington's Watergate complex, a development where many Administration officials live. The board was put in by the Watergate management to attract brokerage-house tenants, but they are few. On one recent day, the only tape watchers were two caged red parrots that ate sunflower seeds and squawked as they observed the quotations.