SackOrderManaging wholesale coffee standing orders for cafés
Updated October 22, 2026 · For specialty coffee roasters with wholesale accounts
Wholesale is often the steady base of a small roastery: cafés ordering the same coffees on the same schedule. Steady, that is, until an order is missed and a café runs out of espresso on a Saturday morning.
Standing orders take the guesswork out, as long as they are written down in one place and everyone in the roastery works from the same list.
Record each standing order
- The café and the person who places orders.
- Which coffee and bag size, such as a 5 lb espresso blend.
- How many bags.
- The cadence: weekly, every two weeks, monthly.
- The next ship date.
Work from next ship dates
Sort standing orders by next ship date. Each week you can see exactly what ships, and after an order ships, move its next date forward by its cadence. Doing that the same day keeps the list true.
Mark orders ready
Once an order is roasted and bagged, mark it ready. On ship day, everything marked ready goes out; anything not ready is visible immediately, while there is still time to roast it.
Pauses and changes
Cafés close for holidays and change blends. Pause an order rather than deleting it, so it’s easy to restart with the same details. When a café changes its coffee or bag count, update the standing order rather than adding a second one, or you’ll ship both.
One-off orders
Cafés will also ask for extras before a busy weekend. Treat these as separate one-time orders with their own ship date, so they don’t change the standing order by accident.
Common questions
- Weekly or biweekly?
- Weekly keeps coffee fresher for busy cafés; biweekly suits smaller shops or decaf and single-origin offerings. Let the café’s volume decide.