Bellweather Coffee
A roaster losing wholesale orders in an inbox, and what it took to stop.
Four hundred kilos a week, thirty cafés, one whiteboard.
Bellweather roast about four hundred kilos a week and supply around thirty cafés and two small grocery chains. Wholesale is most of the revenue.
Every one of those orders arrived by email. Some of them arrived as a text message. A few arrived as a voice note. The founder read all of them, wrote them onto a whiteboard in the roastery, and then the whiteboard got wiped every Friday.
They knew they were missing orders. They did not know how many, and they had no way of finding out.
Every enquiry, against what actually got roasted.
The first two weeks were just counting.
I went back through six months of email and reconciled every wholesale enquiry against what actually got roasted and invoiced. Eight per cent never made it to the whiteboard. That number was the whole engagement, really. Once we knew it, nobody needed convincing.
One intake form
Instead of five channels. Email, text and voice notes all end up in the same place.
A standing order list
For the cafés that order the same thing every week, so nobody has to ask.
A weekly roast plan
That the roastery can see without asking the founder anything.
Eight per cent to under one.
Down from eight per cent, counted the same way both times.
About half of it was orders they were already getting and simply not fulfilling.
The founder stopped being the only route into the business, for the first time in three years.
“I thought we had a growth problem. We had a filing problem.”
Founder, Bellweather Coffee
If any of that sounds familiar, get in touch.
Tell me what is going on and I will tell you if I can help.