Every shop owner with a back room eventually asks the same question: how often should stock arrive? There is no number that fits every shop, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. There is, though, a short piece of arithmetic that turns the question into something you can answer with your own sales figures, in about ten minutes.
The short version
- Work out your days of cover: how many days the stock you can hold will last at your normal sales rate.
- Deliveries must be spaced so that the gap between them, plus the lead time, fits inside those days, with a margin left over.
- Fast and slow sellers deserve different rhythms, so split them instead of averaging them.
- Emergency runs are the clearest sign that a schedule is wrong.
Start with days of cover
Days of cover is the number of days your stock would last if no delivery arrived. For a single product it is the most you can hold (shelf plus back room), divided by how many you sell on an average day. A shop that holds 24 candles and sells 4 a day has 6 days of cover.
That number sets a ceiling on how far apart deliveries can be. Two things eat into it. The first is lead time: you decide what to order on one day and the stock arrives on a later one, and sales continue in between. The second is a safety margin, the days you keep in reserve for a busy weekend, a late supplier or a missed pickup. The rule is:
Here it is with illustrative numbers. They are made up to show the method; replace them with your own. Assume the shop holds at most 24 units of each item, the lead time is one day and the safety margin is two days.
| Item | Sold per day | Days of cover (24 ÷ sold) | Longest gap (cover − 1 − 2) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fast mover | 4 | 6 days | 3 days |
| Middle of the range | 2 | 12 days | 9 days |
| Slow mover | 0.5 | 48 days | 45 days |
The same shelf space gives a delivery gap of three days for one product and six weeks for another. That is why asking "how often should I restock?" about a whole store produces a muddy answer. The honest answer is different for each part of the range.
Why not simply deliver every day?
Because small, frequent deliveries are not free. Each stop has a cost to the courier and to you, from the time spent receiving to the price of the run. Against that, large, rare deliveries have a cost too: stock that sits on a shelf takes up space, ties up cash and, for some goods, spoils, dates or walks out the door. Add the two together and the total tends to be lowest somewhere in the middle.
A small boutique with one narrow display wall and a lot of cash tied up in each piece sits towards the right of that chart, and wants frequent, small deliveries. A shop with a large back room and bulky, slow-selling stock sits towards the left. Nothing about either shop is wrong; they are simply on different parts of the same curve.
Split fast movers from slow movers
Once the arithmetic shows a three-day gap for some items and a six-week gap for others, the sensible response is two rhythms rather than one compromise.
- A top-up run that arrives often, carries only the fast movers, and is small enough to put away in a few minutes.
- A full restock that arrives less often, carries everything else, and is sized to the back room rather than to the next few days.
They can share a route. A common arrangement is a short run on fixed weekdays, with the full restock added on the first run of the month. The shop sees the same driver on the same days, which makes receiving routine, and you only pay for the bigger load when there is a bigger load.
Signs your schedule is wrong
Numbers on a page only go so far. The shop floor tells you quickly when a schedule is off, in both directions.
| If you see this | It probably means | What to try |
|---|---|---|
| Empty facings late in the cycle, on the same days each week | Gaps between deliveries are longer than your days of cover. | Add a top-up run for the items that empty first. |
| Emergency same-day runs, especially on the same weekday | A scheduled run is missing on that day. | Turn the recurring emergency into a scheduled run (see below). |
| Deliveries that arrive with a few items each | Gaps are shorter than the stock justifies. | Combine runs, or move slow movers to the full restock. |
| Back room full of stock you are not selling | Too much ordered per delivery, not enough runs. | Order less per run and raise the frequency for those lines. |
| Staff leaving the floor to receive small drops | Receiving cost is rising with each small delivery. | Agree fixed receiving times so deliveries land when someone is ready. |
Of these, the emergency run deserves particular attention. A one-off same-day delivery is a good tool for a real surprise, and same-day versus scheduled delivery explains when it earns its price. When the same emergency recurs every Thursday, it is not an emergency; it is a missing scheduled run that you are paying a premium for. Count the emergency runs in the last three months, note the weekdays, and the pattern is usually obvious.
Choosing a rhythm for your situation
Use the arithmetic first, then sanity-check the result against the shape of the shop.
| Situation | A reasonable starting point | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Small shop, narrow shelves, fast-selling lines | Frequent top-ups, a few times a week | There is not room to hold more than a few days of cover. |
| Large back room, bulky or slow-selling stock | A full restock every week or two | Space is available and each delivery is large. |
| Goods that date, melt or wilt | Small, frequent drops with fixed receiving times | The shelf life, not the shelf space, sets the limit. See setting up receiving for fresh goods. |
| A seasonal spike on the way | Temporarily add runs, then return to normal | Days of cover shrink when sales double. See peak season planning. |
| Two or more locations | One day, one route | See the next section. |
With several locations, line the days up
The cheapest way to restock three shops is rarely three separate deliveries on three different days. If every location is served on the same weekday, a single route can run them in sequence, and the cost of the run is shared. Where the shops differ, vary what is on the truck, not the day. A small location gets a smaller drop, but it is still on the same loop. How multi-stop routes are built explains why the order of stops matters and what a route with many stops costs to run.
Review it every quarter
A cadence that was right in March can be wrong by October. Sales drift, ranges change and the season turns. Once a quarter, look at four things: sales per day for your top ten items, any stockouts, the number of emergency runs, and what you spent on delivery. If none of them has moved, leave the schedule alone. If one has, recalculate days of cover for the lines affected and adjust only those.
Doing it yourself, or handing it off
Some owners start by making the restock run themselves, which works until the schedule needs to be tighter than a free afternoon. What a do-it-yourself delivery actually costs puts a number on the hours. If you hand the runs to a courier, the useful questions are practical ones: which days, what pickup time, who receives, and what happens on a holiday.
At Recourier, retail restock is run as scheduled routes on agreed days, with a tracking link and a photo confirmation at drop-off so you can see when stock has landed. The details are on the retail and boutique restock page.
Frequently asked questions
How often should a small retail store restock?
It depends on how quickly each item sells and how much you can store. Work out days of cover for your fast sellers, subtract lead time and a safety margin, and the result is the longest gap you can afford. A mix of frequent top-ups and a less frequent full restock usually fits better than a single rhythm.
What is "days of cover"?
The number of days your current stock would last at your normal sales rate, with no new delivery. It is the maximum you can hold divided by the average units sold per day.
Is more frequent delivery always better?
No. More frequent deliveries lower the stock you need to hold, but each one has a cost to run and to receive. Past a certain point the extra runs cost more than the holding cost they save.
How do I choose which day to receive deliveries?
Pick days when someone is free to receive and check the goods, away from your busiest selling hours. If you have several locations, use the same day for all of them so one route can serve them in sequence.
Want restock runs on a fixed schedule? Tell us your locations, your best-selling lines and the days you want stock on the shelf, and we will propose a route.