Why We Don’t Always Have Everything

One of the most common questions we hear is,

“Do you have anything else in the back?”

It is a reasonable question. Most grocery stores operate with significant storage space and excess inventory. If something is missing from the case, there is often more of it waiting behind a door.

That is not how we operate.

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There Is No Hidden Abundance

Early on, someone in the industry asked me, “Why don’t you have a walk-in?”

My distributor can deliver up to six days a week. So the real question for me was not how much we could have on hand. It was how much we should have on hand.

Meat is perishable. It degrades. It goes bad. Carrying more inventory than we reasonably expect to sell in a day or two is not security, it’s risk. Especially when we first opened and had no sales data to rely on, we had no idea how many people were even going to walk through the door.

When something sells out, it is not hiding somewhere. It was stocked intentionally, and it moved.

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It Is About the Right Amount, Not the Maximum Amount

It is not that we cannot get more of a specific cut. In most cases, we can.

The real constraint is timing. The question is never, “How much tri-tip can we get for tomorrow?” It is always, “How much tri-tip should we get for tomorrow?”

That “should” includes recent sales patterns, foot traffic, shelf life, waste risk, and cash tied up in inventory. Getting more is easy. Getting the right amount is the work.

When something is sold out, it usually means demand moved faster than expected within that window.

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Demand Is Not Even

Imbalance is constant.

Certain cuts move faster than others every day of the week. It comes down to familiarity. People buy what they know, or what they know how to cook.

Ribeye.

Chicken breast.

Ground beef.

Italian sausage.

These are household names. They feel safe and predictable, so they move quickly.

I remember a customer coming in on Christmas Eve, right before we were about to close, surprised at how empty the case looked. From their perspective, it did not add up. From ours, we had just had the biggest sales day of the year and were about to close for several days. Everything had converged at once.

The case reflects demand in real time, not what it looked like yesterday.

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Bottlenecks Are Real

On a national level, the meat supply chain is a machine. If you ask for something, you generally get it.

But once production moves in-house, bottlenecks appear. We make things in small batches and deliberately control shelf life that way. Labor, timing, and workflow matter. Production capacity on any given day is finite.

Sometimes something is unavailable not because we cannot source it, but because we are in the middle of producing it, aging it, or scheduling it for the next run.

Supply upstream may be abundant. Throughput downstream is intentional.

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Empty Space Is Not a Secret

When a customer sees an empty spot in the case, it usually means exactly what it looks like. Either we sold out, or we are in the midst of restocking it.

Time of day matters. Before 4pm, we are often actively working on replacing something, especially if it is made in-house. Later in the day, with only a couple hours left, it may not make sense to produce another batch.

There is no hidden inventory in the back. If we have something worth selling, it is in the case. I have had people ask if we have anything “interesting” tucked away. In this business, interesting usually implies expensive. And if it is expensive, it belongs in a selling position, not behind a door.

We are not holding anything back.

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Inventory Represents Obligation

The quiet upside to not having everything at all times is discipline.

The meat in the case is not given to us. Even when we operate on terms with our vendors, inventory represents a cash obligation. Every pound we bring in will need to be paid for.

So when we look at the case, we are not just looking at product. We are looking at commitments. If there is five thousand dollars’ worth of inventory in the cooler, that represents five thousand dollars that will need to leave the bank account.

Because of that, every ounce we buy needs to have a high probability of selling, and selling relatively quickly.

Carrying excess inventory does not create security. It increases exposure. The more product sitting still, the more obligation sitting behind it.

Freshness and waste control matter, but financial discipline underlies all of it. Stocking what makes sense for the next day or two keeps product moving, keeps quality high, and keeps commitments manageable.