Without a good system, Out of Code Beer will become a very expensive problem for your business. In this post, we’ll review a process to reduce the out of code beer expense in your company.
Out of Code Basics
When we started tracking and measuring out of code product expense, our sales team was shocked by the results.
They had no idea that, on average, we had to sell five more cases of beer to make up for every one case that went out of code and needed to be destroyed.
Once everyone understood the impact of out of code expense on our income statement, it was time to take action and work together to reduce this expense.
List the Code Dates for All Products
The first step was to assemble a list of code dates for all the products we carried, and communicate this information to our sales, delivery and merchandising teams.
This proved to be a difficult task because breweries use different code date systems on their packages. Some packages were marked with a best by date, while others had a born on date.
Still other packages had a mysterious code that was supposed to indicate the shelf life. Figuring out the proper code dates was hard, but it was the only way to identify old beer in the market.
Next, we implemented a Close Code Process. The goal was to reduce out of code beer expense by identifying and selling through close coded beer before it expired.
Out of code beer is dead beer, but close code still has a pulse. We focused time and energy on saving the patient – saving the beer – and reducing out of code beer expense.
Try out the close code process and measure your progress towards reducing old beer expenses. Your income statement will thank you.
Yours in Reducing Out of Code Beer,
Kary