Wholesale Handler
The cutoff is the moment the pick list closes, not the moment the van pulls away
Staging a delivery van is a sequenced job. Later stops go deeper in the vehicle, earlier drops stay reachable, similar-looking cases are separated so two accounts are not swapped, and each picked order is checked against the order record before it joins the staging area. Every one of those steps assumes the list is final.
The load itself often happens at dawn rather than overnight, because beer that sits several hours in a warm van arrives in worse condition than it left in, and kegs stay in the cold store until the last moment. That makes the pick the binding event rather than the wheels turning: a brewery picking Wednesday evening for a Thursday run has committed Thursday's beer by the time it locks the door.
Newburgh Brewing states the consequence in its trade terms - after the Wednesday cutoff the order may already be prepared, so even a cancellation may not be possible.
Choosing a cutoff for each delivery day
Published deadlines on real beer runs sit between one afternoon and two business days ahead.
Three things move the deadline for a given day:
- Working hours behind it. A Friday afternoon cutoff gives a Monday round the same brewery time a Wednesday evening cutoff gives a Thursday round. Set both to "the day before" and the Monday round gets no picking time at all.
- Distance and stop count. A dense town round picked in an hour can close late. A county round of 20 stops sequenced by drop order closes earlier, because the pick is longer and a mistake is a longer drive to fix.
- What the day carries. Kegs pulled from the cold store are a picking job. Kegs that have to be filled are a production job - Alternate Ending Beer Co. asks for 48 hours and fills Monday to Friday, so a Monday delivery of a beer still in tank was committed the previous Thursday.
Bars and restaurants take most of their beer sales at the end of the week, which is why Thursday and Friday rounds are the busiest and the ones a late addition hurts most.
Lead time the cutoff has to cover
The gap between cutoff and load absorbs four named jobs:
- Picking and staging the round, in drop order.
- Filling anything not already in the cold store.
- Printing delivery notes and invoices in stop order.
- Any at-rest period the beer or the state requires. Delaware sets 18 hours at rest for beer moving under a self-delivery licence.
The customer's own lead time is a separate number on top. Cask needs at least 24 hours settling after delivery before it can be served, so a pub pouring a new cask on Friday needs it dropped Thursday - which pulls their order back to Wednesday against a Thursday-delivery cutoff.
In some states the written order has to exist before the van leaves
Delaware puts the sequence in law rather than policy. Under 4 DE Admin. Code 911, which covers self-delivery of up to 1,500 barrels a year, peddling beer is not permitted: orders for all beer must be received in writing from customers before the loaded vehicles leave the brewery's premises, a copy must be on the vehicle throughout the delivery, and no beer in excess of that ordered may be carried.
That bans selling spare kegs off the back of the van. Where a rule like it applies, the cutoff is the point at which the paperwork has to be complete, and "add two more" at the door has no document behind it.
Answering the pub that rings after the cutoff
A published answer gives the same call the same outcome each week. The three standard ones:
- The order goes on that account's next scheduled run.
- The pub collects from the brewery, which leaves the round untouched.
- An off-day delivery, usually charged. Brewers Distributor Limited publishes that pair - a pick-up order or an off-day delivery order - for customers who miss their order day.
How to handle wholesale customers who change their orders covers the wider case, including changes that arrive before the deadline.
Setting delivery days and cutoffs in Wholesale Handler
Delivery days and cutoffs sit on an order profile - a reusable bundle of delivery days, ordering cutoff, maximum lead time, delivery charge and minimum spend, assigned per customer. The cutoff can be set once for the whole profile or vary per delivery day, so a town round closing Wednesday evening and a county round closing Friday lunchtime are two profiles rather than a rule kept in someone's head.
A locked delivery date tells the customer which rule closed it - not a delivery day, a holiday or closure, the cutoff has passed, or too far ahead - and carries the brewery's own cutoff message underneath. That message is where the collection and off-day rules go, so a customer reads them at the moment they hit the wall.
Standing orders generate at the cutoff time on a weekly to four-weekly cadence, which covers the accounts taking the same two kegs every week. How small breweries take orders from pubs without a distributor covers the rest of the ordering setup. Wholesale Handler is a flat monthly fee, with no per-order or per-user charge.
What Wholesale Handler does not do
- Route planning and load sequencing. It decides what is on the van for each day. It does not order the stops, plan the load, run a driver app or capture proof of delivery.
- Keg deposits and empty returns. Returnable containers are not tracked, so deposits and empty collections stay wherever they are handled now.
- Future-dated cutoff changes. A change to a delivery day or cutoff applies from the moment it is saved, so a new round is announced to customers separately and set on the day it starts.
