Meet The Team: Joe Chamberlain & Neil Wardle
We talk to the team with arguably the most important role in keeping the drinks flowing and your business growing at Christmas: the distribution and dray team.
SO, GENTS, YOU ARE THE GUYS RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING SURE VENUES HAVE DRINKS TO SELL THIS CHRISTMAS?
Joe: Pretty much! It’s our job, and that of our various teams, to make sure that the drinks keep flowing this Christmas. Having said that, that’s our job all year round but it gets a little more exciting at Christmas as you can imagine.
NO PRESSURE THEN?
Joe: To be fair it can be a pretty pressurised job as you’re dealing with all sorts of things you can’t control as well as all the things you can, so you end up having to be very organised and very prepared, but also very flexible and responsive as things change.
WHAT DOES A DISTRIBUTION CENTRE MANAGER ACTUALLY DO?
Joe: So, we have three depots. Eastwood in Nottingham, which I run, then one in Bury St Edmunds and one in Abingdon. At Eastwood, we do a huge volume of wine and spirits as well as beer for the whole Greene King business. As it’s spirits sales that tend to peak most dramatically at Christmas, that means we’re in the spotlight at this time of year. But we also move a lot of beer. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot.
HOW MUCH IS A LOT?
Joe: Well, we measure beer in tonnage, rather than by pint, but we typically deal with around 52,000 tonnes of beer a year.
AND WHAT IS THAT IN PINTS?
Joe: Give or take, it’s about 75 million pints a year. We do about 44,000 delivery stops a year over 4,786 different routes. In total, that tallies to almost 618,000 miles a year.
THAT’S A LOT OF BEER ! HOW MANY VEHICLES DO YOU HAVE?
Neil: That’s where I and my team come in! We have 22 vehicles at the moment, and we have 91 members of the team including 45 Dray Operatives and the people at the depot. It’s a big job, as you can see.
DOES IT GET EVEN BIGGER AT CHRISTMAS?
Joe: Yes, Christmas is our busiest period and we do use agency staff as required to cope with the spike in tonnage but we try to manage that as cost-efficiently as possible. At Christmas we usually see a 20 to 25% increase in output through Eastwood and, on wine and spirits specifically, that increase is closer to 50%.
THAT SEEMS LIKE A MONUMENTAL CHALLENGE, NEIL?
Neil: It is indeed! As I only joined in January I haven’t worked through the Christmas period with Greene King yet but I’m already confident about this year. Our biggest KPI is called OTIF, which stands for ‘On Time In Full’. Basically, every order from a customer arrives on time and complete with nothing missing from the order. We measure that daily at the depot level and we are averaging 97.58% OTIF scores which is not bad at all.
IT’S BETTER THAN ‘NOT BAD’!
Neil: Yes, we’re pleased with it and we know it matters a whole lot to our customers and it’s easy to see why. You can’t keep the drinks flowing if they turn up late or they don’t turn up at all! But it does get even more complicated at Christmas because of the challenges that Joe mentioned above. Over the festive period we see big growth in spirits which are typically packed in cases or what we call ‘small packs’. Yes, a very technical term, but it differentiates them from ‘large packs’ which is the way beer is transported. With a 50% spike in spirits volumes, it means a lot more manual handling and time to shift all those small cases, but it’s all accounted for in the planning and the team does a fantastic job for our customers.
AND WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SOMETHING DOESN’T GO TO PLAN?
Neil: Our approach is basically a ‘whatever it takes’ approach. In the past I know we’ve literally had Depot
Managers jump into a truck to deliver a customer’s order because drivers had called in sick. We try to avoid situations like that obviously, but it demonstrates the lengths we go to in order to make sure our customers get their orders. They’re relying on us, and we need to maintain that trust and that relationship by helping them keep the drinks flowing.
HOW DO THINGS STEP UP AS CHRISTMAS APPROACHES?
Joe: Normally we’re a Monday to Friday business because that’s the way venues want it. They don’t want deliveries at the weekend – but at Christmas that changes and we start doing weekend deliveries to help our customers maintain stock levels. It really is all hands on deck and we do double shifting and encourage the teams not to take holidays in the run up to Christmas.
Neil: We’re also set up so that the three depots can help each other out if required and that provides another safety net, another level of comfort and confidence that we won’t let our customers down. And it requires unbelievable amounts of high-quality teamwork. But you can’t argue with 97.58% OTIF scores!
HOW DO YOU FEEL CHRISTMAS 2024 WILL PLAY OUT ?
Joe: We know the trade has suffered through the pandemic and we haven’t quite gotten back to the baseline numbers we compare ourselves with in 2019, the pre-pandemic numbers. But I have a feeling that if it goes well over the next couple of months, we might see us hitting those levels for the first time since 2019.
Neil: One thing is for sure, Joe and I and our teams will be doing literally everything we can to help our customers hit those numbers. Nothing would put a bigger smile on our faces.
EASTWOOD DISTRIBUTION CENTRE IN NUMBERS
– 52,000 tonnes of beer a year – equating to 75 million pints 44,000 delivery stops a year
– 618,000 miles covered
– 22 vehicles and 91 colleagues
– 20-25% increase in output over Christmas
– 50% increase in wines and spirits output over Christmas
– 97.58% ‘On Time In Full’ deliveries average
