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Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]

modest.coffee

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Re: Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]

#341

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

fabian2k wrote: post #257
zuppy wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t be that sure about the price being good, if we’re talking about specialty coffee, which is a totally different kind of beast than the supermarket coffee. It’s almost a half a year old coffee (time since roast), a great part of the flavor has been already lost. We also don’t know how it has been stored, temperature will also affect the quality. here’s a very deeply technical explanation of this, right from…

The kind of people that buy specialty coffee would also tend to pay attention to roast dates and have very different expectations compared to people that buy coffee in a supermarket. Half a year is a lot for this audience. When you buy from a roaster directly something like roasted a week ago would be more like the typical age. So I'm a bit surprised, I would have expected this audience to be much pickier about the a…

How large are these bags? Maybe it’s a good price for coffee to season grinders.

Re: Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]

#342

Post by teawrecks »

lisper wrote: post #305
cortesoft wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming they knew the $250k amount at that point. When they made the deal for 6000 units, they didn't know the total was going to be $250k. They didn't know the total was $250k until they learned it was for 6000 cases later.

> You are assuming they knew the $250k amount at that point. No, I'm saying they should have asked .

You're moving your goalpost. Up above you said,

> They thought they had a deal to sell 6000 "units" for $250,000.

Now you're agreeing that they didn't necessarily have that deal up front, and that they should have asked for it.

Re: Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]

#344

Post by the_cat_kittles »

i neither trust nor have sympathy for anyone in the situation. i guess its because any inter-business negotiation / transaction should be assumed to be hostile since its generally close to a zero sum game, or partially one. you are trying to buy some goods / services to then sell for a profit, or you are trying to sell some goods or services for a profit that you already made. its the same as flipping something at a yard sale- sometimes you get screwed, and its basically always your fault. i guess your post reads like you think you are a well behaved consumer buying stuff at a retailer with good customer service. which is an impossibly naive or deliberately false point of view. and of course, the fact that your whole goal of writing these posts was to sell the coffee, and it worked, makes your aw shucks routine all the more suspicious. i have been screwed many times in the world of manufacturing, no one ever complains like this, you either have recourse or you eat it and dont feel bad for yourself.

edit: on top of that you are selling coffee, something that is already well provided everywhere. it would be different if there was some element of charity or necessity, but your endeavor is purely a profit seeking one (with no negative externalities, id consider it neutral to everyone else) which furthers the mismatch between your tone and reality

edit 2: of course i think its a dick move by someone to order a bunch, then reneg. but if you werent aware of that risk, you are just stupid, especially if your going to spend 250k

Re: Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]

#345

Post by 55555 »

fnbr wrote: post #249
Freestyler_3 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand either. They sell for 50% off right now for 42 a case, meaning normal price was 84. 84 × 6000 = 504 000 This doesn't add up with the 250k they were hoping for and the 50% off. Or am I wrong? (too bad they only have decaf yet, wouldn't have minded to try.)

Normal retail price. They were probably hoping to wholesale it for 42 per case, which is what they’re selling it for now.

Yeah so begging for help and everyone shows up to help but they’re still trying to take profit on the entire thing. Honestly nice work, They pulled it off. If I were in that position I would have cut the price to the bare COGs. Feels wrong to beg for help while secretly profiting off your rescuers.

Re: Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]

#346

Post by 55555 »

acchow wrote: post #335
nebulous1 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when the prices/etc don't line up Actually, that does have me confused as to how this could happen. Was the coffee quoted per case or per bag? And when the order came in per "unit", how did they not notice that price was 6x higher than it should have been?

I think gp comment is saying that the coffee roaster believed they were selling it at $x/bag. But the acquirer thought they were paying $x/case, which looked very very cheap so they ordered 6000 units of it.

Honestly pretty amazing that this issue could be unnoticed and grow to this degree. I guess that’s the power of wishful thinking. Obv the distributor isn’t putting much thought into this, but the small business owner certainly did.

Re: Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]

#347

Post by Thorentis »

dtnewman wrote: post #280
lisper wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it sounds like they had an initial agreement for 6000 units, but the actual purchase orders were coming in piecemeal. What difference does that make? They thought they had a deal to sell 6000 "units" for $250,000. If they had just bothered to divide 250 by 6 they would have immediately realized that a unit could not possibly be a bag, and they would, by their own account, have passed on the deal, and none of thi…

You are making the assumption that there's some formal deal for $250k total. I don't think that was ever the case. My guess is that in these negotiations, you tell the buyer that you sell in packs of 6 for say $41/case. They run their numbers and come back to you saying "okay, we have all the info we need and we are going to take 6000 units and the formal POs will come over the next few weeks."

Why would you go into debt for $216k, if you didn't know you were going to make at least that much back?

From the article, they said they knew that $250k was coming so it would be worth it.

This is a major error on their part, to think they had really found somebody willing to pay $41/bag.

Re: Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]

#348

Post by 55555 »

cortesoft wrote: post #298
lisper wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are making the assumption that there's some formal deal for $250k total. No, I'm not. I'm not assuming anything. Here is what they wrote: "In April 2022, a representative from this distributor reached out to us to see if we would be interested in participating in an online specialty coffee program for a major nationwide retailer. The opening order would be approximately 6,000 “units”." At this point there are o…

You are assuming they knew the $250k amount at that point. When they made the deal for 6000 units, they didn't know the total was going to be $250k. They didn't know the total was $250k until they learned it was for 6000 cases later.

No, but they were 100% given a price for the 6000 units. Nobody is shipping 6000 units to anyone unless they know and like the amount they are being paid.

Re: Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]

#349

Post by patcon »

55555 wrote: post #345
fnbr wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal retail price. They were probably hoping to wholesale it for 42 per case, which is what they’re selling it for now.

Yeah so begging for help and everyone shows up to help but they’re still trying to take profit on the entire thing. Honestly nice work, They pulled it off. If I were in that position I would have cut the price to the bare COGs. Feels wrong to beg for help while secretly profiting off your rescuers.

Respectfully, people getting a "50% off retail value" deal on a product are not what most would simply call "rescuers". They are people who got a stellar deal and maybe got a good feel or two that they wouldn't normally have

Re: Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]

#350

Post by lisper »

teawrecks wrote: post #342
lisper wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are assuming they knew the $250k amount at that point. No, I'm saying they should have asked .

You're moving your goalpost. Up above you said, > They thought they had a deal to sell 6000 "units" for $250,000. Now you're agreeing that they didn't necessarily have that deal up front, and that they should have asked for it.

Yes, that's what I thought at the time. But then I re-read the article and realized that it was intentionally misleading. It is now clear to me that not only are they idiots, they are also dishonest. The summary of the situation, in their words, is:

"TLDR: We got grifted by a multi-billion dollar distributor for $250,000."

That is a lie.

What actually happened is that a broker came to them with an offer which they accepted despite not achieving clarity on exactly what the offer actually was. They thought they were signing up for 6000 bags when in fact they were signing up for six times as many because they did not understand a term of art in their industry. This was their first mistake. Then, when they realized their mistake, they decided to proceed and invest the necessary capital to meet the order without fully assessing the potential risks. That was their second mistake. They could have pulled the plug then, but they chose not to.

Then it all fell through. That's tough, I feel sorry for them, but they are not the victims here. Deals falling through is a Thing That Happens in business. That's why there are contracts and insurance, and why finance and risk management is a thing. At every step in the process, their situation was 100% their fault. No one lied to them. No one put a gun to their head and forced them to do something they didn't want to do. No one did anything that was not part of standard business practice. The situation is entirely the result of their naivete, failure to do their due diligence, failure to properly assess risks, and unbelievably poor decision making in the face of newly discovered information.

And now they are digging themselves in even deeper by accusing their distributor of grifting them. No, sorry, they were not grifted. They were just stupid, and rather than admit it and learn from it, they are trying to shift the blame to their distributor and make this sound like a David-v-Goliath story. It isn't. It's a company-being-stupid-failing-to-own-up-to-it story.

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