How should a craft distillery use depletion data?
The short answer: Use it to decide where your small team spends its time: which accounts get the next visit, which market gets the next tasting, and what you bring to the next distributor meeting. Start with one monthly review of volume, buying accounts, reorders and SKUs. A short list you act on beats a dashboard nobody opens.
A monthly routine
- Confirm every distributor's report for the latest full month is in.
- Compare volume and buying accounts with the month before and the same month last year.
- Check which SKUs are moving and which aren't.
- Pull the accounts that went quiet and the ones that are growing.
- Turn that into a short follow-up list with names and dates.
Build an account support list
Steady buyers who could carry a second SKU. Repeat accounts that suddenly went quiet. Places where your rep has a good relationship but sales are thin. Run the list past your distributor before you act on it.
Check events against the numbers
Log every tasting and visit, then look at what the account did afterward. Over a few months you'll learn which kinds of events are worth the gas.
Use it in planning, too
Depletions show how your products are moving into accounts right now. Put that next to your own inventory, the distributor's inventory and your lead times when you decide what to bottle next.
Make one person own it
Someone confirms the data is complete, someone reviews it, and every follow-up has an owner. That's the whole system.
DepletionIQ started inside a Kentucky distillery for exactly this reason. Read the case study.