Wholesale Handler
The crop is fixed before the first order arrives
Most colonies are harvested once a year, twice at most, after the main nectar flow ends. USDA's Honey report of 13 March 2026 put 2025 production at 116 million pounds from 2.41 million producing colonies, an average of 48.0 pounds per colony, sold at an average of $3.05 a pound. Trade guidance puts an established hive at 30 to 60 pounds of surplus in a normal year and a first-year hive at nothing to 20.
A bakery short of sourdough bakes more tomorrow. A beekeeper short of sourwood waits for next June. Every jar promised to one shop is a jar another shop cannot have, so taking honey orders is allocation rather than selling, and the parts that matter are what a shop is allowed to order, what the shop sees when a line runs out, and which accounts have a claim on the crop before it is extracted.
Jar size and varietal are separate products
A 12 oz jar and a 1 lb jar of the same honey draw on the same bucket but sell at different prices and run out at different rates, so each one is its own line on the order form. The same goes for a single-apiary or single-varietal batch, which exists in a fixed count and is worth keeping distinct from the blended wildflower that runs all year.
Naming a line for its floral source is optional under FDA guidance, which takes "honey" as the statement of identity for a single-ingredient jar, but where a source is named it has to be the primary one for that batch. UK jars carry more on the label: country of origin and a best-before date, the full day/month/year form of which doubles as the lot mark under the Honey (England) Regulations 2015.
Case size is the other half of the listing. Six units is a common trial order, eight suits most independents and twelve suits a high-volume account; holding to one matters more than the number. Wholesale Handler prices per unit, where the unit is a piece, box or case, so the case is what a shop orders and the jar count lives in the product name. Each product can carry its own SKU, or a generated three-word code like oak-hawk-fox that reads cleanly over the phone, plus a manufacturer barcode where the shop scans at the till.
Closing a line when the last case goes out
A line that has sold out stays on the order form in Wholesale Handler with an availability window against it, tagged with a reason - limited stock, discontinued, weather delay or other - and a note the shop reads while ordering. The window can run to a date or be left open until further notice, which is the honest setting for a varietal whose return depends on next year's bloom. A shop can ask to be told when that product is orderable again, and the alert goes out the moment it is.
Where a line comes back on a predictable date, a recurring season fits better: set spring honey as available 1 May to 30 June and it repeats every year, showing out of season with the date it returns. Managing seasonal availability covers how those windows behave across a whole catalogue. For the rest, a stock quantity against the product counts down as orders land and closes the line at zero.
A garden centre and a village deli are not on the same rate
Shops generally expect to buy at around half the shelf price, since a retailer wants a 40 to 50 percent margin on a jar. Within that, a garden centre taking 48 jars on one drop and a deli taking 12 are different costs to supply, because one bottling run and one stop beats four of each.
Price lists in Wholesale Handler are named, assigned per customer, and can be built as a percentage off a base list with rounding controls, so a whole tier moves together when the crop comes in short and the price has to rise. Each shop signs in and sees only its own rate. When a price has changed in the last thirty days, the order form shows the old price struck through beside the new one, so an account meets the increase while ordering rather than on the invoice. Charging different prices to different wholesale customers covers how the tiers are set up.
Putting a repeat account on a standing order
An account that takes the same two cases every three weeks is set up once and generated from then on. Wholesale Handler runs standing orders weekly, two-weekly, three-weekly or four-weekly, creates each upcoming order at your cutoff time, and lets either side pause it until a chosen date or indefinitely, skip a single occurrence, or update products and quantities at any point. Either you or the shop can set one up.
A calendar month is not one of those cadences. Four-weekly gives thirteen deliveries a year rather than twelve, and a shop that wants the first Tuesday of each month places that order itself. Against a fixed crop, a standing order is also a commitment months out, so it is worth knowing what is already spoken for before a new account is promised a line.
The round is a delivery day, not a shipping date
Order profiles are reusable bundles of accepted delivery days, an ordering cutoff, a maximum lead time, delivery charges and a minimum spend, assigned per customer and updated in one place for everyone on them. The cutoff can be set once for the profile or vary per day, so a Thursday village round closes Tuesday at 5pm while a Monday run out to the garden centres stays open until Sunday evening. A floor like $200 on a first order and $75 on every one after it is the profile's minimum spend. Holidays and blackout dates are set globally, which covers the weeks you are extracting rather than delivering.
Turning the order into an invoice
Several un-invoiced orders for one shop become a single invoice, emailed from the same place, with PDF packing slips and invoices for the drop. Payments are declared by the customer and confirmed or disputed by you, with the full history on each invoice, and invoice line items export to CSV for accounting software. There is no card processing in Wholesale Handler and no transaction fee on an order.
What this does not cover
- Consignment. An order is recorded as a sale when it is placed, so jars sitting unsold on a shelf are not tracked. Handling sale or return covers the shape of that arrangement.
- Batch records. Products carry SKUs and barcodes, not a lot code or best-before date per fill, so jar-level traceability stays wherever you keep it now.
- Delivery routing. There is no route planning, driver app or proof of delivery; the packing slip is what goes in the van.
- Insurance and licensing. Stockists commonly require product liability cover before carrying a new line, which sits outside any ordering software.
Wholesale Handler is a flat monthly fee, with no per-user, per-order or commission charge, and the demo runs on a stocked account with no signup or card.
