Texting the local brewery on a Sunday night
You buy lager and cider from a wholesaler, your core cask from a regional brewery and guest ales from three local breweries. The wholesaler has an online portal with a Tuesday cut-off. The regional brewery takes orders by email before Wednesday for Friday delivery. One local brewery prefers a text. Another has a form on its website. The third delivers only every other week.
On Sunday night you stand in the cellar, look at what is on stillage and what is waiting, and try to remember who delivers when. You send a text, write an email, and mean to log into the portal tomorrow. On Wednesday you realise the email to the regional brewery never got sent and the core bitter will run out before the next delivery.
Why beer ordering is so fragmented
Buying from several suppliers is what makes a good free house interesting, and every brewery works in its own way. Small breweries have small teams and simple ordering. Larger ones have portals and fixed routes. There is no common format, and each supplier's cut-off and delivery pattern is something the licensee holds in their head.
The information you need to order well is also split. Stock is in the cellar. Sales are in the EPOS. What you ordered last time is in your sent messages, spread across a phone and an email account. So each order is built from memory and a quick look at the stillage.
The cost of ordering from memory
| Slip | Effect |
|---|---|
| Missed cut-off | A core beer runs out before the next delivery |
| Over-ordering casks | Beer past its best before it is sold |
| Orders spread across text and email | No record when a delivery is wrong |
| Delivery days forgotten | Nobody in to take the dray |
| No view of spend per supplier | Terms and prices never compared |
Cask is the most unforgiving. Once tapped it has a limited time before quality drops, so ordering too much of a slow ale costs more than the price of the cask. Running out of your best seller costs trade on the busiest night.
A weekly beer order screen
- Each supplier is set up with its delivery days, cut-off, minimum order, ordering method and the products you buy from them.
- Stock comes from your weekly cellar count or a quick mid-week update, and sales by product from your EPOS.
- For each product, the screen suggests a quantity based on recent sales, stock on hand and the time until the next delivery after that supplier's cut-off.
- You adjust the suggestions and approve. Orders are sent in the way each supplier takes them: email in their preferred layout, a text, or ready to enter in their portal, with a reminder if the cut-off is close and nothing has gone.
- Each order is stored, so the delivery can be checked against it when the dray arrives.
- A monthly view shows spend and volume per supplier and per product.
Guest ales are chosen by you. The tool can track what you have had on and how it sold, but the choice of what to try next stays at the bar.
Sunday night, done in ten minutes
You open the order screen. The core bitter is flagged because the regional brewery's cut-off is Wednesday and stock will not last until the following Friday. The wholesaler suggestions look right. The local brewery's text is drafted. You adjust, approve and go to bed. On Tuesday a reminder says the portal order is still not placed.
- Every supplier's cut-off and delivery day tracked
- Suggested quantities from stock and sales
- Orders sent the way each brewery prefers
- A record of every order to check deliveries against
Does your beer ordering look like this?
- You order from three or more breweries or wholesalers.
- Orders go by a mix of text, email, phone and portal.
- You have missed a cut-off and run out of a core beer.
- Casks have gone past their best before being sold.
- You cannot easily see what you spent with each brewery last month.