A bottle shop owner tries three local producers. One replies in two hours with a price list, a delivery schedule and an account form. One replies in four days. One never replies at all.
Guess which one is on the shelf a fortnight later, and which one stays there for three years.
Step 1: put a trade page on the website
Findable from the main navigation, not buried in an about page. Buyers look for the word trade or stockist, and if it is not there they assume you do not sell that way.
Step 2: publish what a buyer needs to decide
Minimum order value or quantity, formats and pack sizes, delivery days and areas, lead time, payment terms and whether a first order carries different conditions.
Step 3: be clear about pricing structure
Whether there are tiers by volume, whether keg and package pricing differ and what applies to smaller accounts. Exact figures can go out with the account, and the structure should be public.
Step 4: explain delivery honestly
Which days you deliver to which areas, what happens outside them, whether a courier is used for smaller accounts and the minimum for free delivery. Buyers plan their ordering around this.
Step 5: address sale or return early
Shops ask about it and many producers do not offer it. Saying so plainly, and explaining what you do instead, is better than an awkward negotiation after the first order.
Step 6: say what support comes with stocking you
Point of sale material, staff tastings, product information, social content and whether you attend a launch. This is what separates a brand a shop backs from one it merely carries.
Step 7: make the account application quick
Business name, address, contact, delivery instructions and any licence or registration details. A long form loses buyers who were enthusiastic twenty minutes ago, which is the friction described in trade account applications that stall.
Step 8: answer at trade hours
Bar managers and shop owners do their ordering early in the morning and late at night, not during your office hours. Capturing the enquiry when it arrives is the whole advantage.
Step 9: handle wholesalers and distributors separately
They want volume pricing, exclusivity discussions and logistics conversations that a bottle shop does not. Mixing the two routes slows both.
Step 10: keep the reorder easy
A regular contact, a standing order option and a simple way to change quantities. The first order is the hard part and the reorder is where the money is.
Step 10b: publish shelf life and storage
Buyers need to know how long a product keeps, whether it must be kept cold and how it should be stored and displayed. A shop that orders a case and watches half of it go out of date has learned something expensive about your brand, and a producer who publishes this openly is trusted with a larger second order.
Step 10c: tell them how it sells
A buyer deciding between your product and a competitor wants to know who drinks it, what it sits alongside and how it has performed in similar shops. Describing the customer honestly, rather than describing the liquid, is what helps a buyer picture it on their own shelf and order accordingly.
Step 11: separate trade from visitors entirely
Tour and tasting enquiries arrive through the same site, as covered in tour and tasting bookings for breweries and wineries.
Step 12: the broader trade picture
It is covered in trade and stockist enquiries for craft drinks producers, and publishing pricing openly works the same way as in how photographers handle pricing enquiries with a chatbot.
Getting started
Publish minimums, delivery, formats and account terms, then capture trade enquiries at any hour and route them away from visitor questions. SpideyChat for food and drink businesses answers from your published pages. Try SpideyChat on your own site, or read about capture on the features page.