The Delivery Window Nobody Set
Suppliers arrive when it suits their route, which is usually when nobody is there or when everybody is busy. What that costs in stock, hours and errors, and how to set a window a supplier will actually keep.
The delivery arrives at 11:00, or at 16:30, or during prep. Nobody agreed to any of these times.
The supplier's route decided it, and your operation has been arranging itself around that route for years.
What an unset window costs
Somebody has to be there. Paid hours whose only purpose is waiting, at a time nobody else needs to be in the building.
Checking gets skipped. ⚠️ The expensive one. A delivery arriving mid-prep is signed for without being counted, and short or wrong deliveries become invisible.
Stock sits in the wrong place. Dropped inside the door because whoever received it was doing something else. Chilled items in particular.
Nobody knows what arrived. The person who received it is not the person who ordered it, and there is no handover between them.
The check is the whole point
A delivery that is not checked against the order is a payment you are making on trust.
Count it against the order, not the delivery note. ⚠️ The delivery note matches what was sent, not what you asked for — checking one against the other proves nothing about whether you got what you ordered.
Note the discrepancy immediately. Most suppliers require it within a short window, and a discrepancy found on Friday about a Tuesday delivery is usually uncollectable.
Check the substitutions. ⚠️ Substituted items are frequently a different size or grade at the same line price, and this is where margin quietly leaves.
Setting a window
Suppliers will agree to windows more often than venues assume, because a predictable stop is worth something to a driver too.
Ask for a two-hour window, not a time. A time will be missed and a window can be kept. ⚠️ A missed time teaches everyone the window is fictional, and then nobody plans around it.
Pick a slot with a person in it anyway. Not the quietest hour — the hour when someone competent is already present with time to count.
Name who receives. By role. "Whoever is nearest" is the current system and is the reason nothing gets checked.
Ask what it would take. If the route genuinely cannot accommodate you, that is worth knowing — and it is a fact about that supplier you should weigh, not a fixed constraint on your operation.
The out-of-hours version
Some deliveries arrive before anyone is in. If that is genuinely the arrangement, then the check has to be built into the opening routine — first task, against the order, before anything else starts.
⚠️ Unchecked out-of-hours delivery is the highest-risk arrangement there is, because there is no moment at which anyone was responsible for it, and shortages become undisputable weeks later.
The pattern worth looking for
Shortages and substitutions are rarely random.
By supplier. One will account for most of it. By item. Usually the same few lines, which suggests supply rather than error. By day. ⚠️ Frequently the day of the week your delivery falls late in the route.
None of this is visible without a record, which is why most venues have a strong feeling about which supplier is unreliable and no evidence with which to raise it.
An unset window costs the hours around it
No window someone has to be available all morning
A window someone has to be available for one hour
⚠️ What is being paid for is not the delivery. It is the waiting, and it is paid by whoever cannot leave.
The check is the whole point of being there
Signed for you have accepted whatever arrived
Checked you have accepted what you ordered
⚠️ Signing without checking transfers the entire risk to you, and a short delivery discovered that evening cannot be proved. ⇒ Which makes the window a question of who is available to check, not who is available to receive.
Setting one
Ask for a window most suppliers have one and have never been asked
Name your constraint "before 11, or after 3" is easier to meet than "morning"
⚠️ A narrower request is often accepted more readily than a vague one, because it fits into their routing rather than competing with it.
Out of hours
Left outside the risk is yours from the moment it is left
Neighbour takes it the check does not happen
⚠️ Both arrangements move the goods and remove the check. ⇒ If it is unavoidable, decide in advance what is checked afterwards and by when — otherwise the discrepancy surfaces at stocktake and cannot be attributed to any delivery.
Short deliveries that cluster
Short deliveries clustering on one day or one driver
⚠️ A single short delivery is an error; four in a pattern is something else. ⇒ And it is only visible if what was checked was written down, which is the reason to keep the record beyond the week.
Three to hold
Discrepancies per delivery, by supplier. ⚠️ The number that makes the conversation possible. A feeling gets dismissed; a count gets a credit.
Deliveries received outside the agreed window. If it is most of them, there is no window.
Deliveries signed for without being counted. Uncomfortable to measure and usually the largest number on this list.
Where the record has to sit
A discrepancy noted on the delivery note and left in a folder is not a claim. It has to be recorded where whoever handles the invoice will see it before paying, or the credit never gets requested.
tasteck keeps supplier and settlement records alongside the daily operational record, so a shortage noted at 11:00 is visible when the invoice is processed.
The supplier did not choose a bad time. Nobody ever told them there was a good one.
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