Drinks by the carton for a cafe, canteen or hawker stall

A stall sells drinks by the can and buys them by the carton, and the gap between the two is where the money is made or lost: too much stock ties up cash and shelf, too little sends a customer next door. This guide is for the cafe owner, the canteen operator and the hawker who wants the drinks order to be the boring part of the week.

What to keep on the shelf

Sales at a counter follow a pattern that barely changes from stall to stall:

• Canned soft drinks and isotonic drinks move fastest, especially at lunch and in the heat. Keep the two or three that sell, not the twelve that exist.
• Canned and packet kopi and teh, and the canned coffee and milk drinks, are the second line for a canteen or a kopitiam-style counter.
• Packet drinks are for children and for the customer who wants something lighter; they take little space and keep well.
• Bottled water sells all day and needs no fridge to be sold, though it sells better cold.
• Big bottles for a cafe's tables or a canteen's self-service station.

Two brands of each kind are enough. Range for its own sake becomes stock you cannot sell.

Size the weekly order

Count what you sold last week, by kind, and order that plus one carton of each of the fast movers. If you have no last week yet, start with two cartons of each of the three fast kinds and one of the rest, and correct after seven days. Cartons keep for months unopened and out of the sun, so a carton too many is stock, not waste.

Order when a fast mover is down to its last carton. We deliver within 3–5 working days, so the last carton covers the gap. A fixed day works too: many outlets order every Monday for the following week.

Delivery to the back door

Our own vans deliver anywhere in Singapore, to a shop door, a loading bay or a hawker centre's service area. Put the receiving hours and where the cartons should go in Delivery Notes in your basket; a stall that is closed at ten in the morning should say so. Delivery is S$4.99 flat and free from S$65 of drinks at the prices you pay, which a weekly restock usually clears.

Halal at your counter

If your stall or cafe is Halal-certified, every drink you sell must carry a recognised Halal mark. On our store those products show the Halal badge, and the Halal filter narrows any collection to them. We put the badge only on products whose pack carries the mark, and we check the pack, not the brand. Confirm the mark on delivery, as your certification requires.

The container deposit when you are the seller

Every can and plastic bottle we sell you carries the container deposit, S$0.10 a container and S$2.40 a carton of 24, on its own line without GST. It is refundable to whoever returns the container. How an F&B outlet handles the deposit at its own counter, and what it does with the empties customers leave, follows the National Environment Agency's guidance for the scheme; that is theirs to set and we do not paraphrase it. What we do is keep the deposit visible and separate on every invoice so your books can treat it as what it is.

Invoices and repeat orders

A business account puts your company name and UEN on a GST invoice under Gourmet Supplies Pte Ltd and gives you a quick-order page: paste the same list every week and it becomes one basket. The price is the price every shopper pays, with the bulk discount by spend shown in the basket; there is no separate list to negotiate and nothing to check.

Where to order

Soft drinks by the carton, kopi and teh, packet drinks, isotonic and energy drinks, water and big bottles.

Cartons people start with

• Coke Zero, 24 cans of 320ml
• 100 Plus, 24 cans of 325ml
• Killiney milk coffee, 24 cans of 240ml
• Yeo's chrysanthemum tea, 24 packets of 250ml
• Elements water, 24 bottles of 500ml

More collections for this guide

• Lemon tea
• Milk tea drinks