Wholesale Handler
The cure sets the range before any order arrives
Cure length is not a lead time that compresses under pressure. Narrow salamini in casings under 28mm hang for under four weeks. A standard 55-60mm chub in hog bung or fibrous casing runs six to ten weeks. Coppa hangs for three to six months and is often vacuum-matured well past that. Whole-leg prosciutto passes a year.
The finish point is weight loss rather than a date. Producers pull a dry salami somewhere in a 30-40% loss band, with 35% the common release figure, and two batches hung on the same morning can reach it days apart depending on diameter, fat content and how the room ran that fortnight. A ready date on a wholesale line sheet is therefore an estimate, and a batch that dries slowly moves it.
That is the difference from a bakery. A bakery cutoff protects the packing morning. A smokehouse cutoff protects a decision made months ago about how many chubs to hang, and the ordering flow sits downstream of that decision rather than feeding it.
Publishing what is ready rather than the whole range
A line sheet carrying everything the smokehouse makes will take orders against a batch that is still three weeks short, and the recovery is a phone call to a chef who has already written a menu.
In Wholesale Handler a product can be marked unavailable between two dates or until further notice, with a reason attached - weather delay, limited stock, discontinued or other - and a customer-facing note that says more. The note is where the real answer goes: the finocchiona is hanging and expected around 14 November. Customers see the reason and the note on the order form instead of an absence.
Stock counting is a separate, opt-in setting per product. A product that is not tracked can be ordered in any quantity, which suits anything cut to order. A tracked product that reaches zero stops being orderable until it is restocked, which is what a finite rack of 220 chubs needs. Managing seasonal availability in wholesale produce covers the other shape, where availability repeats on a calendar every year.
Whole and sliced are separate products on the list
Slicing a ready-to-eat cured product after its lethality step makes it post-lethality exposed under 9 CFR 430, which puts it under one of three Listeria control alternatives and, for deli-style product under the sanitation-only alternative, the heaviest FSIS verification testing. A whole dried chub at a moisture-protein ratio of 1.9:1 or below is shelf stable under FSIS labelling standards. A sliced vacuum pack is a refrigerated item.
So one salami is two products with different pack sizes, different prices, different shelf lives and often different availability, because the sliced line runs out when slicing capacity runs out rather than when the rack does. Listing them as one product with a note is where wholesale order errors come from. Each product in Wholesale Handler carries its own optional SKU, which appears on packing slips, invoices and the accounting export, plus an optional manufacturer barcode, so the two lines stay distinct through to the invoice.
Pricing a whole piece at the weight it turns out to be
Whole cured products are sold by the piece at a variable weight. A working wholesale line sheet reads "Approx. 3lb, 4 per case", and the difference between the nominal figure and the scale settles on the invoice.
Wholesale Handler holds three pricing modes per product. Per unit is a flat price for each piece, box or case. By weight lets a customer order an exact weight at a per-kg or per-lb rate. Catch weight is the one built for this: the customer orders by count and sees a typical price derived from a typical weight, the weight actually picked is recorded at the pick step, and the order re-settles its subtotal, tax, delivery charge and total against the terms it was placed under. The invoice line then reads as the real transaction, "5.1 kg at $4.00/kg". An order whose catch-weight lines have not been weighed is refused at invoice creation, so an estimate cannot bill as an actual.
Sliced packs are usually fixed weight, so the same catalogue holds per-unit pricing for the sliced lines and catch weight for the whole pieces.
Cutoffs that close a delivery day, not a week
Perishable cured product does not sit in transit over a weekend, so producers converge on a small set of fixed dispatch days with a published cutoff against each one - orders in by Tuesday night for a Wednesday dispatch, and anything later goes to the following week.
Order profiles in Wholesale Handler are reusable bundles of accepted delivery days, an ordering cutoff, a maximum lead time, a delivery charge and a minimum spend, assigned per customer. The cutoff can be set once for the whole profile or vary by delivery day, so a Thursday run can close Wednesday lunchtime while a Monday run stays open until Sunday evening. Update the profile once and every customer on it follows, which is how a local delivery round and a two-day courier list can run under different terms without duplicating anything. Wholesalers also write their own cutoff message saying what a customer should do about a late change. Stopping wholesale customers ordering after the cutoff covers what the customer sees when a delivery date locks.
The restaurant account taking the same three lines every fortnight
Restaurant accounts on a cured-meat list tend to be narrow and repetitive - the same sopressata, the same coppa, the same sliced pepperoni, every two weeks, because the board on the menu did not change.
Standing orders run on a weekly, two-weekly, three-weekly or four-weekly cadence and are generated automatically at the cutoff. They can be set up by the customer or by the merchant on their behalf, paused until a chosen resume date or indefinitely, skipped for a single occurrence, or updated for products and quantities at any time. What a standing order is in wholesale covers the mechanics.
Prices differ by account. Named price lists are assigned per customer, with percentage-based pricing and rounding controls, and a price changed in the last thirty days shows the old figure struck through beside the new one on the order form. Charging different prices to different wholesale customers covers how the lists are built.
What Wholesale Handler does not hold
- Production and curing records. There is no batch record, green-weight or dry-weight log, pH reading, lot traceability or HACCP documentation. Wholesale Handler starts at the finished product and what it is being sold as.
- Notification when a dated unavailability window lapses. A customer can ask to be told when a product is orderable again, and that email fires when tracked stock returns to positive or when a season reopens. A dated unavailability window simply ending does not send it yet.
- Delivery routing. There is no run sheet with per-customer stops, driver app or proof of delivery.
Pricing is a flat monthly fee, with no per-user charge, no per-order fee and no commission on order value. The demo opens on a stocked account with no signup and no card.
