Wholesale Handler
Your hens don't care about your delivery schedule.
They lay fewer eggs in winter because the days are shorter. They moult in autumn and production drops for weeks. Spring brings a surge, but it takes time to ramp back up. Meanwhile, your customers order the same quantities year-round - because from their side, eggs are just a line on a weekly order.
The result is a gap that opens and closes with the seasons. Some weeks you've got more eggs than orders. Other weeks you're eight dozen short and someone isn't getting their full delivery. The question isn't whether this will happen. It's whether you see it coming or find out while you're packing the van.
The production cycle you're working around
If you're running free-range or pastured hens, your production curve looks roughly like this:
- Spring
Laying picks up as daylight hours increase. This is your peak. Hens that moulted in autumn are back in full production and the new pullets are coming online
- Summer
Strong and steady, though extreme heat can cause a temporary dip. This is usually when supply comfortably exceeds demand
- Autumn
Moulting season. Older hens stop laying for four to six weeks while they replace feathers. If your flock is all the same age, this hits hard. Production can drop 30-50%
- Winter
Shorter days mean fewer eggs. Without supplemental lighting, some hens stop laying altogether. Production is at its lowest while customers still expect their usual orders
Commercial battery operations solve this with controlled lighting and rolling flock replacements. Most small producers aren't. Production is seasonal by nature, which means order management needs to account for it.
Where this creates problems
You don't know the total until it's too late
If you're managing orders through messages or a notebook, you probably don't add up the total until packing morning. That's when you discover you've got 24 dozen collected and 32 dozen promised. Now you're making allocation decisions at 5am with a torch and a headache.
Customers find out at delivery
The worst version of a shortage is when your customer finds out standing in their kitchen, looking at a short delivery. No warning, no chance to source elsewhere. Even if they're understanding about it, it erodes trust. They start over-ordering as a buffer, which makes your planning even harder.
You prioritise by instinct, not information
When supply falls short, choices get made. The big cafe gets their full order because they're the biggest account. The deli gets cut because they're newer. But without data, these decisions happen from memory - no clear picture of who ordered what, what the total is, or how far short things are. Gut feel, not informed.
How to stay ahead of it
Know your total orders before packing day
The single most useful thing is seeing your aggregate order total for the week before you start packing. If you can see on Friday that Monday's orders add up to 30 dozen and you've only collected 24, you've got the weekend to make decisions - not 5am on Monday.
Communicate shortages early
A message on Saturday saying "production is down this week, I may need to reduce some orders by a few dozen" is completely different from turning up on Monday with a short delivery. Customers can plan around a heads-up. They can't plan around a surprise.
Track the pattern across months
The first year, seasonal drops catch you off guard. By the second year, you should know roughly when moulting hits, when winter production bottoms out, and when spring picks up. Write it down. Even a simple note - "October: expect 30% drop for 4-6 weeks" - means you're not surprised next year.
Plan your flock around your accounts
If all your hens are the same age, they'll moult at the same time and your production falls off a cliff. Staggering ages means some hens are always laying while others moult. This is flock management, not order management - but it's the production decision that most directly affects your ability to fill orders consistently.
Easter: the spike you can see coming
Easter is the sharpest demand increase of the year. Every restaurant and bakery customer wants more eggs in the same week - often 50% more. Unlike moulting or winter drops, this one is completely predictable. You know the date. You know it's coming.
The mistake is waiting until Easter week to find out whether you can fill the orders. By then it's too late to do anything except apologise.
What works:
- Two weeks before, check your total orders against expected production. If there's a gap, you have time to tell customers you're capping quantities
- Set a cutoff for order changes. If customers can keep adding to their Easter order until the last minute, you'll never have a stable number to plan against
- Watch the aggregate total building. If you can see total orders climbing through the week before Easter, you spot the spike forming and act on it rather than react to it
The same approach works for any predictable surge - bank holidays, summer brunch season, local events. The principle is the same: see the total early, communicate before delivery day.
How Wholesale Handler solves this
Wholesale Handler gives you a production schedule dashboard that shows total quantities by delivery date. You see the aggregate across all customers - not individual messages you have to add up yourself.
When orders are in one place with clear totals, you know on Friday whether Monday's round is covered or whether you need to get ahead of a shortage. You can message customers before they're expecting a delivery, not during it.
No flock management tools, no production forecasting algorithms. Just a clear view of what's been ordered so you can match it against what your hens are actually producing.
