Wholesale Handler
The order book sizes the flock
Commercial poults take about 14 weeks on feed to reach market weight, which is why the American Farm Bureau Federation puts July placement as the deadline for a bird marketed at Thanksgiving. Small-flock broad-breasted birds run longer, roughly 16 to 22 weeks, and heritage breeds 24 to 30, putting the poult order in spring.
That inverts the usual relationship between an order and a product. In most wholesale trade the goods exist, or could exist by Friday, and the order draws them down. A turkey ordered in September is a commitment against an animal that is half grown and assigned to nobody. The pre-order window is not a marketing device sitting on top of production; it is what sizes production. Once the flock is set, every further order is taken against a fixed number of birds.
Produce has the same structure with a harvest plan behind it rather than a hatch date. Acreage, planting dates and storage for the sweet potatoes, squash, cranberries and sprouts that move in Thanksgiving week were settled in the growing season, and the order book either matches what was planted or it does not.
Opening a window against a future delivery date
A pre-order is an ordinary order carrying a delivery date months out, so the settings that matter are the delivery days themselves and how far ahead the portal will accept one.
In Wholesale Handler both sit on the order profile assigned to each customer, alongside the ordering cutoff, delivery charges and minimum spend. The maximum lead time is the one that bites on a seasonal book: set to two weeks, it silently refuses a September order for a November date, so a Thanksgiving window needs it widened to cover the whole gap on whichever profiles the holiday accounts sit on.
Which products are orderable is set separately. A product's season is set once and repeats every year, so a fresh whole turkey listed with a season running from late summer to the cutoff date is orderable inside the window and not outside it. Out of season it stays on the order form showing the date it returns, which is what answers the restaurant asking in March when the book opens.
Selling a weight range you cannot promise
Farms sell bands, not weights. Published ranges run from two bands (under 17 lb and over 17 lb) to five (7-10, 10-14, 16-18, 18-22 and 22-26 lb), and every one carries a disclaimer. Canter Hill Farm states that predicting poundage is very difficult and that November weather can add up to 4 lb to a bird. Tussock Sedge Farm says finished weights vary bird to bird and that birds are not assigned to individual customers in advance.
The invoice is where that uncertainty has to resolve, and catch weight is the pricing mode built for it. A catch-weight product is ordered by count against a typical weight, shows a typical price at order time, then re-prices from the weight recorded at picking, so the invoice bills what was actually sent as a line reading 18.4 lb at $6.50/lb. A grocer ordering twelve birds in the 16-18 lb band gets a per-bird figure to plan against in September and an accurate bill in November with nothing renegotiated.
Each band is its own product, with its own typical weight and its own availability. That is what lets one size close while another stays open, which is what a flock finishing unevenly requires.
Closing the book early enough to matter
Published farm cutoffs cluster in October. Saco River Farms asks for reservations by October 1; Canter Hill Farm takes orders until the birds are gone and sold out by October 31 last year. That is six to eight weeks ahead of delivery, and it is early because the constraint is the flock rather than the van.
Two separate closures do the work. The cutoff on the order profile is the per-delivery-day one and can vary by day, so a Tuesday collection can close on the Friday before while a Wednesday one stays open longer. Closing the whole book is the season end date on the product, or an availability window tagged for limited stock carrying a note customers see on the order form. How to set wholesale order cutoffs for a peak season covers how the two interact when volume spikes.
Minimum spend per account
Thanksgiving pulls in accounts that order once a year, and a single-bird order takes a slot in a two-day collection window. Minimum spend belongs to the order profile rather than to the customer record, so a holiday profile with its own minimum, delivery days and delivery charge can be assigned to the seasonal accounts while year-round customers keep their terms. Prices are per customer too, through named price lists, so a chain grocer taking forty birds and a butcher taking four can be on different rates.
Turning the book into a collection schedule
The pre-orders are the production plan. A consolidated production schedule is generated from the incoming orders, which on a turkey farm is the pack list by band and on a produce farm the harvest quantity by line.
Collection concentrates hard. Farms typically run the Saturday before plus the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, some of them 8am to 8pm, and several take no deliveries at all in that week. Those days go in as the accepted delivery days on the profile, each with its own cutoff, and Thanksgiving Day itself plus the days after go in as blackout dates so nothing can be booked into them. Every order prints a PDF packing slip, so the pick runs off a document rather than a phone. How to handle a seasonal order surge covers the staffing side of a week like that.
Deposits sit outside the ordering system
Deposit plus balance on actual weight is the standard direct-to-consumer turkey model, typically $30 to $80 a bird and often non-refundable past a stated date. Wholesale Handler holds no card details and takes no payment: an invoice is raised from the order, the customer declares a payment against it, and the merchant confirms or disputes that. A deposit on a trade pre-order is arranged and collected separately.
