Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: A billion dollars is lost weekly from out of stock situations during beverage season.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: What an awful stat.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: What the heck? Get your freight on the shelf, people.
[00:00:10] Speaker C: If you're not on time, yes, you're losing out on sales, but you're also damaging your relationship with your buyer and your retailer.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Party's right.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Party's ruined. My house is getting edged.
[00:00:18] Speaker C: Every year there's a new water bottle that everyone's gotta have.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Yeah. My nine year old wants a Stanley and she's demanding it by name. I've got a specific beef with them that we're not gonna discuss today because it'd be rude.
[00:00:28] Speaker D: Calling all CPG shippers, truckers and logistics pros.
Welcome to the truck. Yeah. Podcast your ultimate cheat code for smarter shipping, smoother logistics, and dominating the shelf where it matters most. Buckle up. It's time to learn, laugh and get your freight on.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition of the Zipline Logistics Podcast. My name is Jesse Jewitt. Joined with me as always, Teddy Lee Knox. Hello, Teddy.
[00:00:58] Speaker C: Hello. How are you?
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. And back again, special guest, founder of Zipline Logistics, Andrew Lynch. Hello, Andrew.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Hey.
Matching your energy today, Jesse?
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Let's get it, bevies. We're talking beverage season. Peak beverage season stat strategies for supply chain success. That is a mouthful. You know, we made her hay.
One of the many products that we made our hay on in the beginning really cut our teeth.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Was beverages.
Right. Delivering into retail. So we're going to talk about beverage season. We're headed into that warmer months of the year.
Man, it's nice to see the sunshine finally after a long cold winter.
What it is, why it matters and how CPG brands can set themselves up for success. If you're lucky, if you listen to the whole episode, we'll talk about some of those CPG brands. Maybe throw in a few snack brands as well. Ted, how about that?
[00:01:55] Speaker C: Love it.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: Let's talk about beverage season.
Tell me what you know about beverage season, Teddi.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: Well, there's things that I know, but first we're just going to give my opinion anyway. So I think that beverage, it's always beverage season. People always have beverages. I mean, we have a couple different podcasts, one of them talking a lot about marketing in CPG brands. And beverages are one of those that everyone carries around a water bottle, a beverage or something. So beverages get probably in my opinion the, I guess like celebrities like everyone's caring when they get that like automatic like endorsement from people. You always see them on TikTok. This beverage is going to Change your life, it's going to change your gut. It's going to make you feel better. It's all these different things. And I feel like that's what people are always going for. It's simple, it's easy, it's relatively cheap to buy to change your life. So I feel like beverage season when I first started was just, you know, like, right around, like, starting tax day, going into, like, back to school. Like, that's when beverage season was. But now I feel like beverages need to be everywhere. They need to be accessible. You need to be able to have them delivered to your home. Walk in and get it. Just one can, six pack, five pack, 12 pack, whatever you need to be doing. It's. It's really changed since my time at Zipline, so I think that that's interesting. And now on all of your phones, you're gonna have all these beverages show up on your. On your Instagram and your feed. So sorry for that. But I think that that's why it is so important for beverage brands to make sure that they have these strategies for success. Because if you're claiming you're going to change someone's life with your beverage, you better be on the shelf.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I, I feel like Zipline is where I learned that people drink more beverages at different times. Like, I. I'm always drinking something at all times and I just thought everyone was like that. It turns out when it gets warm out, people drink more of things.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: How about it?
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it shouldn't have been shot.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Maybe an Arnie Pomi or a. Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Oh, man. But, but yeah, I mean, that, that was, that was one of the many things that I feel like, you know, our. Our earliest. I think our first beverage client was Vita Coco.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: I'm not 100% certain of that. There, There may have been some, some smaller brands, but that. They certainly were like the first one that I really remember where it was like, oh, no, we get super busy these times.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: These specific times.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: And they would talk about like, the
[00:04:17] Speaker A: bodegas are hot and nyc. Let's go, baby. Right.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: And it's like it's festival season.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: You know, right. Picnic season. And then it does.
You know, it's baseball season. Things do start to add up. I guess when you, when you think about the, the commercial channels that these.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: Man, oh, man. We could just do a quick little round table of just like, beverage. You talked about beverage influencers or like social media crazes. They're not a specific beverage brand. But like Stanley's.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Oh, man. Yetis, my 9 year old wants a Stanley and she's demanding it by name.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Not getting it.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Does she have an oala?
[00:04:52] Speaker B: She does. I've got a specific beef with them that we're not going to discuss today because it'd be rude, but every year
[00:04:58] Speaker C: there's a new water bottle that everyone's got to have.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:00] Speaker C: And there's always, like, every month there's the new beverage that everybody's got to have. And now it's like not just fun beverages, but hydration. Like, when I was in school, I didn't go with a water bottle. I had a box of juice and maybe milk and that was it. And now, yeah, my daughters all have to have seven water bottles, one for each day of the week that they can take to school.
And they have to be hydrated. And I'm still dehydrated.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Kids are well hydrated. Really well hydrated. This is going to conflict with our. This is going to conflict with our cocktail conversations later. You made a really good point, though, about, like, the. The beverage really being like that, that one consumer product where the brand, like your brand selection is so visible in your life, like, whatever you are. Like, I think that anyone who knows me knows exactly what, you know, if there's a canned. There's not a lot of canned beverages in my life, but, like, it's usually a spindrift, lemon and tea. Yeah, there's a lot of Fever Tree in my life, obviously.
And. But like, yeah, it's just one of those things that you don't know someone's brand affinity when it comes to chips or tortillas or really almost anything else. But, like, when it comes to their. Their bevy of choice, you know, it's. It's really clear. And I think that's an interesting sort of aspect to that. I wonder if it's why, you know, over the last few years, like brands like Poppy and Olipop, all folks that, like, you know, we've served or helped, you know, kind of scale why they had such loud, recognizable cans. You know, it's not just cool branding. It's also like, yeah, man, you want to see that. That, you know, Khloe Kardashian's walking around with a strawberry poppy, and it's a really, really obvious whose can that is.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Yeah, you think of, like, post athletic events where they've got the. Either the juice or the sports drink next to them.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's wild. Yeah, it is.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: It's coming at us all the time
[00:06:45] Speaker B: it is, they're always pushing, but typically
[00:06:47] Speaker A: just get us back on the rails here. The peak beverage season runs, this says mid May in my show notes through mid July. I think it's closer to what you said, Teddy, like tax season all the way to kind of the beginning of school post Labor Day.
[00:07:00] Speaker C: Well, I guess we're thinking more of the transportation side. We have to start shipping. Yeah, that's to get it to the store so the consumers can start in May. So I apologize, I'm thinking of the whole background.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: But. But we already touched on it already. But the spike in demand, Right, So you've got like you said, baseball games or festivals that are outside when it's warmer weather. We've got Memorial Day, the holiday rush, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day. You know, those are gatherings where, you know, typically you want to have multiple beverages available.
So to your point, Eddie, it strains freight capacity because there's a spike in demand. And we're planning ahead, right? We always plan ahead.
So what does that mean for like the rest of the year? How does that differ in your opinion?
[00:07:44] Speaker C: Well, I think it differs because you, you aren't, you don't need as much replenishment and you don't need the same amount of stock. So that means the, I guess the size of the pallet and the size of the order can be different for beverages, like maybe slower. It's not. It's a just in time model that is maybe monthly, not weekly.
I mean if you think about it like if you have a cookout or something. As a mom, nothing is more stressful than like running out of my kids drinks that they need with their friends
[00:08:12] Speaker A: there can't have that.
[00:08:14] Speaker C: You don't have enough. So Obviously I buy 12 boxes when there are six kids coming over, coming
[00:08:19] Speaker A: up with, you know, specialty cocktails for his gatherings.
You can't run out and you know, you lose out on the.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: Yeah, you can't.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: The Fever Tree mixer like you said, or. And boom.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: Yeah, party's nights ruined. My house is getting right.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:34] Speaker C: Ever since COVID when people, people started panic buying, we didn't really lose that. So like it's, it's still like that underlying fear that we have as consumers that when you're doing something and you're buying it during beverage season, you need these beverages. You buy maybe one more than you actually need. So beverage season, it just increases that so much more. So you have more capacity, more different types of capacity depending on what you have. And you keep it at a certain temperature or ambient and so that is strained a little bit differently. And beverage season, you also have produce, so you have to remember, you know, that type of capacity as well. So it just can, it can increase rates, it can cause, you know, some delays. But more importantly, that's where we've talked about it in so many podcasts. You need to have that lead time, that flexibility and that communication. And that's gonna be the key for making sure you have that success in any season. But specifically beverage season, if you go in to get your can of poppies, you can drink it with your straw after your workout class and it's not there, you're not going to be happy. You're probably going to switch stores or switch brands altogether.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think, you know, it's, it's really important to go back to, you know, when you think about sort of a lot of what we talked about during COVID was this fact that that look, when demand is really, really high, it doesn't mean that, you know, you can slack off as a brand or as a participant in that marketplace. In fact, it means you have to double and triple down on your execution. Because at the end of the day, beverages in general are at peak. Like your specific brand is only at peak if it's on the shelf and it's turning. Brands in general are at peak. And if you've got, you know, back to the, the tried and true example of like if I walk into your store to get an orange spindrift and it's not on the shelf but there's an orange lacroix next to it, you've lost me for that, that transaction, you may though lose me permanently. Right. And when, yeah, you know, you think about the fact that this is festival season and it's picnic season and it's birthday party season and it's, you know, outdoors fun season, you know, elementary school baseball team season. Right. Like people are going to lean on what is there in volume. I can't run out.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Right?
[00:10:45] Speaker B: So you know, listen, if I show up to my kids soccer game with a cooler full of again, orange, orange lacroix this week and every single kid loves it and it's, you know, it happens to always be really well stocked. Well, guess what? I'm going back to the wealth for, for the next one.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: And we talk about involuntary sampling as well. And that started out with just, you know, you go in and you get something but it's actually gotten worse, like to the point like Kroger, Walmart, Whole Foods, Target, like they all show up on the app of what you bought last and it's like reorder. Like it knows what you did, so it knows that your spin drift was out of stock and you went to lacroix. So you just hit reorder again for ease. And then not even intentionally, you just switch brands.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I, yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's just, it's extra important for people to, to, to recognize that O otif, you know, whatever it is that whichever your retailer is measuring by, whatever acronym they're using, it is, it is ultra critical that you're hitting that at this, at this peak time of year.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: That's a great transition. How about the financial consequences of that we talked about? You know, there's, I'll give you a stat, Andrew. You ready for this one?
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Ready.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: $1 billion is lost weekly from out of stock situations during beverage season.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: But what an awful stat.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: What the heck was that? And, and you're afraid of the shelf
[00:12:03] Speaker B: people and something that, that I think we didn't, we didn't touch on, on like the, the, the actual physical transportation side of, of this conversation is that also during peak beverage season, like, look, this is just peak kind of grocery season, right? I mean, people are, it's summertime, your kids are home, they're around, you're buying more groceries, you're stocking.
And that also, that doesn't just mean that there's a great opportunity to sell more beverages and more snacks. It also means that all of the DCs are busier than normal. Right? It is a time when all this. So when your execution is lacking or when people aren't planning far enough ahead or understanding the right way to, you know, manage your constraints so that you can meet, you know, those grocery stores, specific needs, you're vulnerable.
And they're really like the penalties for failure just get kind of worse and worse and worse because when you miss your day and they have to cut a new PO and now it's going to take 24 hours, you'd be allowed to reschedule. You know, suddenly when these, it goes back to like those Covid days of when these stores, these DCs are so busy that now your product went from, you know, maybe it was going to be a few hours late and nobody bothered to, you know, update the DC to now it's going to be four or five days late and you're going to have empty shelves for a few days and you're going to be part of that billion dollars lost.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: We don't Want to be part of that. But what's important to note is, and we're going to, we're kind of doing this in reverse, raising your OTIF from 77% to 95%. I believe we have a calculator for that on our website. We do. If not, you can reach out to us, but that's going to boost your gross margin significantly. And so just getting it there reduces fines from the retailer that you're delivering to and it improves sales because your products on the shelf, it's a win win, folks.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: By the way, I'm pretty sure that that number, that 77 to 95, I think when we ran this the first time and used it, I think it's $81,000 per million dollars in revenue. So $81,000 in gross margin callback.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Per million dollars in revenue. That's a huge number. Right? If a, if your average beverage brands run brand runs on a, on a, like a targeted 35%, you know, minimum gross margin, you know, that's the difference between your brand being actually profitable and being paper profitable.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: Teddy, do you have in your brain any times in your almost 14 beverage seasons that you've worked here? 15.
[00:14:24] Speaker C: Almost 15.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: Almost 15. So 14.
Any brands that stick out that we've worked with that nailed their beverage season strategy?
[00:14:34] Speaker C: I mean, I mean, I know we talked about bite of cocoa, but that's definitely one other ones, Hop Water I think does a really great job of being readily available.
Gorgy, they've been, they ramp up and they do a great job of making sure overall, like thinking of the whole thing, like making sure they have the inventory and the communication to avoid delays to the retailers, which is really important.
My personal favorite, Fever Tree. First of all, I mean, it's beautiful to look at. It's great to be able to drink out of glass, but you know, they're, they're everywhere. They're in restaurants, they're on the shelf. And they're also in the perfect spot on the shelf that you don't have to bend down, you don't have to reach up. You're like, I'm not tall. Like, I can't. If you're up too high, you've lost my business. Like, I can't, I can't reach you. So then that is really important when you think about that, that shelf space there as well. Like, and that goes into what you were saying with otif. If you're not there, if you're not on time, yes, you're losing out on sales, but you're also damaging your relationship with your buyer and your retailer. And they're going to move. They're never here on time. We're not going to give you that. We're not going to put empty space on our shelf at getting our end cap.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Not at Teddy. Eye level.
[00:15:40] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Maybe I get, I get all the, all the garbage brands that can't deliver. My shelves are always empty.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: I got to reach low, squat down.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Yeah. How much Teddy, does this make you think about like how the, how the organization is structured and how they're operating? Like you know, when I, with the brands that you just named, like what the melody line for me. Because there's lots of beverage brands in this portfolio here at Zipline and you know, not all of them are like absolutely crushing it from this perspective just, just because of how, how they operate. And when I think of those brands that you mentioned and, and there, there are plenty of others in our portfolio that would, that would hit this. It's, it's really like it's partnership and that they, they understand where we serve them and how and they trust us to, to execute. And look like sometimes, I mean look right now when fuel's 780 a gallon in California, crazy. You've got to, you have pricing conversations happening.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: And those are to be expected but their priorities are in a place where they understand that like look that like priority one through three is product on shelf on time, in full. You know, kind of tied for fourth behind those is conversations about how to control our pricing and what we could have done better or how we could have behaved differently. And look, there are times when the market fails us and our capacity isn't where it's supposed to be and you know, or there's an issue somewhere and we've got a, you know, or a last minute shipment pops up or sure. Whatever happens and the rate isn't where we want it to be or the price per unit's not where we want it to be. Maybe it's because the volume isn't there.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Or the amount of the product on the truck isn't kind of what we wanted to see. But what, what those brands allow us to do is to execute against the constraint that exists and that can be solved for controlling the controllables back to that. But you know, they're, they, what they identify correctly is that the, the constraint that we're all up against that we can actually influence in the moment is service and execution. They empower us to execute on that level. And then when they have questions about why something costs something or if we need to revisit, you know, the landed cost on a per unit basis to a certain retail location. That's a conversation for after we're, we're out of the fog of execution.
Right. And, and you know, thinking back to Vita Coco, I mean, they were certainly that way. Right? They were. I mean, I think that's, they're a big part of how we learned to, to execute like this was just, oh, wait, we've got to understand that. Yeah, we sure. We can argue about why this truck costs more, you know, this month than it did, you know, three months ago when we don't have a shipment on the dock that needs to get to a store in order for us to recognize a quarter million dollar revenue.
[00:18:16] Speaker C: I agree. I think that goes a lot into like speaking the same language, which is interesting in logistics because I always joke about it, but you have one term, but then seven acronyms for it. And we help so many brands get launched into the retailers like Costco. And Costco has the MABD date, the end date, the sale date, and the cancel by date. And a lot of people give us the end date. And I'm like, no, that's not what we need. The mabd, the end date is when it gets to the store. Like the MABD is what causes it to get to the store. But like understanding those things and helping them figure that out so when they are getting charged back on the end date, it's like that is a DC issue, not a logistics issue.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:55] Speaker C: And being able to help them figure those things out and then just being able to not have to over explain things. Hey, I need this there. Like when people say asap and you're like, okay, I'll just put it at ltl. No, they, we need it there tomorrow. Here's your options to team. Here's what's going on. Like being able just to read between the lines and understand what your partner is saying.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Well, and like the, you know, the, the number of days on that order that in date minus MABD equals how many days you don't have product on the shelf when you miss mabd. Right. Like you can do that math on your own. Yeah. But it, you know, it's usually several days in between those two dates. And that's what people should really realize, I think that.
[00:19:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: That those things signify. Don't miss that mab.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: All right, so we're going to reveal some, some trade secrets here. Oh, we're going to talk about how to dominate the shelf. Okay. How do we dominate? Get in the paint, throw some elbows, Dominate.
First up, this is one of my favorite things to there. To me, there's two.
There's a lot of critical elements, but two big bright shining lights on how to drive your costs down in transportation. Teddy knows what they are. I talked about it with our sales team the other day.
Big shining lights, lead time and flexibility.
Lead time and flexibility. So the first one we're going to talk about is lead time. That's planning shipments early. We gotta get the freight or the orders into our system, understanding all the parameters, right? There's a lot of bullet points below lead time, but that's the big, bright shining lights. How early should we be planning these shipments, Teddy?
[00:20:29] Speaker C: I. Well, I think it depends. If it's just a standard shipment, I would say if you can get 17 to 14 days, that's my preference. Because you have so many retailers, they fill up three weeks in advance. So if you have an MA B D, you need that full time just to get the appointment. And that's for dedicated truckload. If you're talking LTL, you need that 17 days because you need to get it. Make sure it gets to that terminal within that right time to make the appointment. And then if it's a project, I want even more notice. Like if you are doing an mvm, if you're doing some sort of promotion, whether that's at BJ's or Sam's Club or Walmart. If you can give like a month notice, that's helpful because you need to make sure you have the right capacity. You also need to understand how what portion of that is CPU that you might have to come back and rescue later. Because that's. If the market's tough, they're gonna have just as much trouble getting capacity as your broker will be so that those things matter. If standard shipments, the same lead time you get from your customer is what you should be giving your partner. And the same thing goes for projects. You get your stats, your numbers. You should start planning on that now because you might need to figure out another solution. And that goes to the warehouse. Can the warehouse actually store this or are you going to get like a huge fine before it even ships because you have too much stacking that is no longer available?
[00:21:52] Speaker A: I think that we probably have some truck yesters. That's what I'm calling our list.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Oh, all right.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: Truck. Yeah. Heads who are hearing 14 or 17 days or a month lead time. Teddy, you're crazy. I tender my shipments to my carrier in two days and they pick it up and there's no problems. There's never any problems until three months
[00:22:13] Speaker C: later you get a chargeback.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Exactly. So.
[00:22:16] Speaker C: Or six months, depending on the retailer.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Those targets are ideal scenarios.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: Obviously we handle shipments all of the time with less than 17 days lead notice.
[00:22:26] Speaker C: I mean, yes, we, two days is great in logistics. Two to three days lead time is more than enough to get part of
[00:22:33] Speaker A: the bullets that I'm talking about. As far as the big bright shining light of lead time, we're talking, like you said, retail appointments, D.C. appointments. That's critical because like you said, they. We just talked about it. Beverage season is peak. There's, it's busy now. We're talking about a project where maybe volumes are up. So your, your shipper, we only have six appointment slots for this person a day. Well, oh, it's, it's summer peak season and now we're shipping 12 shipments a day.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: How that math doesn't. Math, Andrew?
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I think you know the important and to both of your points, like it's the difference between, between planning and execution timetables. And for us, you know, what we always tell our, our shippers, our clients is like, look, we want visibility as far as possible. What we don't want is for you to wait until you've got inventory validated at your shipping warehouse. And like, because then we were losing a ton of time. Whereas if we can plan, set us up. But we always say, right, set us up to be able to plan for 100% perfection on time, in full. And then from there we'll react to all the things that are going to go wrong. Inevitably, you didn't think about how many slots you had at your, at your origin shipper, or you didn't think about, you know, the fact that some of your retail DC's actually don't respond about appointments until 48 hours before the appointment time. And you know, you need to understand whether or not your, your shipping warehouse has the flexibility to be able to say, hey, I know we planned on delivering this, you know, order to CNS next Friday, but they actually gave us our appointment for Saturday night. Yeah. And can your warehouse hold this for an extra day so that we don't have to sit it on a truck? And those are all of the things that I think are kind of the mix of planning appropriately early and then also working with a specialist. Look, unless, unless you, your brand are going to understand, are going to take the time to understand the strengths and weaknesses of all of your warehouse partners. The strengths and weaknesses of all of your retail partners and all of their DCs and how they operate, then you should probably work with someone who does know all those things and have all that context and approaches your execution through that lens.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: I'm thinking of those projects, too, those spikes of. And retail specific pallet configurations. Right. Oh, Teddy mentioned MVMs. We're probably at probably over 100 MVMs executed for our client partners, if not more than that, you know, thousands and millions. Thousands were the best.
And just having those pallets configured correctly, Right. Those are going into Costco's. They need to have a specific expectation, palette types and stacking and things of that nature. So have we talked to the warehouse? Are they prepped that, you know. Yeah, we, we Normally ship out 20 Costco loads a week. Now we're shipping out 40. Like it, it's, it changes things. What's our pallet configuration look like? Are we ready for that? And that all needs to be planned ahead. Yeah. So go ahead.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Well, allocation as well, right? Yeah, I mean, that, you know, that's, that's kind of the other side of this is also, you know, not only, you know, do you know, or do you have some level of visibility into, you know, kind of what your, your, your channels are going to look like, but also do you have, do you have the appropriate products staged in the right.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: You know, the right sides of this country, or are we going to have, you know, trucks passing each other in the night? Which again, by the way, that is going to happen. Right. Allocation is the hardest thing any of our, our brand partners deal with across every single category that we work with. But, you know, just be aware of those, of those potential issues and again, just have someone who knows how to react and where to go with those.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: This is a weird thought. When you said allocation, do you think there's, do you think there's a part of the country that eats more like chili cheese Fritos than another part? I mean, I know there is 100.
Do you think Frito Lay knows that?
[00:26:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I do. I know he knows that, like sequitur to the non sequitur.
I watched like, you know, some, like, Discovery, because all I do is watch TV shows about trucking and, and production, snacking, beverage.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Cool guy.
[00:26:49] Speaker B: This is all I do.
This is my whole life, guys that Pennsylvanians, Yeah. Eat like 60% more pretzels than any other population in the United States. And like, the Discovery Channel's aware of that. I promise you, the good folks at Frito Lay know exactly where their different flavors get chomped wow. Yeah.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Data's out there, man.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: I mean, I know it's that, like, you say that and it's like, that's a weird and maybe slightly dumb comment, but it's like. No, it's not. They. They know.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Yeah, they know. They know. Of course they do.
[00:27:22] Speaker C: I think it helps as a consumer. Like, it almost makes you feel seen. Like they, they knew that I needed the chili. Chili cheese Frito Lace. Like, that's an interesting take. This is, this is, it's here, like, because I feel like I have soccer coming up tomorrow from 9am to 4pm Yeah, I have, I think 20 minutes in between going to fields. So, like, it's chaos and.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Got your snacks ready?
[00:27:44] Speaker C: No, I don't. I'm not ready. But like, I start. I have to start off with coffee. So, you know, we're starting off with Wandering Bear because it's just ready to go.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:27:52] Speaker C: And then I gotta have to have my gorgi for the afternoon so I can get through exactly the rest of it. And my two little ones, they love popcorn. So you gotta have, you have popcorn, you have chips, you gotta have warm snacks and cold snacks and you gotta. You feel bad as a parent. So you have to have fruits and veggies in there too. So, like, ones that are prepackaged and ready to go are always extremely helpful.
And like, you, you have to have all of those things. And I feel like you start to see that like the shelves, you start to see the, like, more small prepackaged chips and convenient, like school snacks. Because you don't just need them for school now. You need them, you know, all the way. You need them all summer as well. Almost more important. So I feel like that's like, when you see those things happen, it's like, oh, a little bit of panic. Oh, this, this season is starting. But at the same time, like, thank goodness they were ready for me. Yeah, good seer.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: They're so thoughtful.
[00:28:42] Speaker C: They are so thoughtful. Thank you.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: All right, wrapping it up here on. On beverage peak season.
Anything in particular? And I think we've kind of touched on all of them, Andrew. So two questions. You can answer both. You can answer one, you can tell me to buzz off, but one thing brands maybe overlook during this season or one piece of advice that you'd give someone preparing now.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: So I think our truck Yasters and truck Yaz queens may like to reflect on the fact that the busiest times of year are, you know, again, not just the most competitive from a product on shelf perspective, not just the most competitive from a D.C. appointment perspective, but also the most competitive for truck capacity.
And we were talking before the show opened that, you know, we're at an all time low of expectations out of our, out of our trucking partners. And that's not saying that great trucking companies don't still do a great job and offer great service. What it's saying is that as an industry, the bar for a carrier to be qualified in an acceptable way now is that they won't literally victimize you by stealing your product off the truck. Yeah. And what brands should do right now is reset their expectation of value from the providers that they work with and expect that not only do their products not get stolen. Teddy and Jesse. But that they arrive on time and in and that they work with partners that aren't just focused on offering the absolute bare minimum that we should expect out of each other as a society and start expecting what it is that we're paying for, which is a service from a, you know, qualified and in some cases in our case, expert service provider that's here to help us thrive.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Nailed it, folks. Check out the blog that inspired this topic on peak beverage season that's at www.ziplinelogistics.com. we're going to leave it in the show notes as well. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Always like and subscribe. Smash that button. Rate us and review on Apple and Spotify when you can.
Andrew, thanks for joining us. Teddy, as always, thank you truck yesters. We'll see you next time on the Zipline Logistics podcast. Thank you.
