Updated October 2026
Every warehouse has an off week. When the same problem keeps coming back with your dated stock and your partner can't fix it, start looking at other warehouses.
A food or beverage brand should think about switching fulfillment partners when problems like these keep returning:
One miss happens anywhere. The same miss, again and again, with no fix from your partner, is the reason to move.
By The Fulfillment.com team
A truck runs late, a storm shuts a hub, a count comes up short once. Every 3PL has days like that. If you leave over one of them, you take on a warehouse you don't know yet and pay for a move you may not have needed. What matters is whether the same failure keeps hitting the same SKUs. It also matters whether your partner can tell you what it will change, and whether the change holds.
Food and drink is dated, heavy and regulated, and the trouble tends to show up in the same few spots. A short-dated lot ships when it shouldn't have. A recall turns into a guess about which products to pull. Heavy cases cost too much to ship and arrive dented. Once one of these starts happening every month, you're looking at how the warehouse works.
Measure each one against how your own partner has performed. Note how many you recognize.
Shipping a jar close to its best-by date is a quick way to lose a customer. If you're answering complaints about short-dated units, or writing off stock that expired on your partner's shelves, its rotation doesn't suit dated product. Food and drink lots often arrive out of date order, so they need to ship by best-by date rather than by arrival, which is FEFO (first expired, first out). We record the best-by date as your stock arrives, and the soonest-dated units go out first. Our guide to FEFO vs FIFO for food and beverage compares the two, and the lot, expiry, and FEFO control service is where we run it.
When a contamination or quality problem turns up, you need to know which units it touched and where they went. If your partner can't tell you lot by lot, a recall becomes a pull of everything you sell. You write off the most stock and face the most regulatory exposure. We record a traceability lot code when stock arrives and carry it through to every order that ships. That lets us trace one affected lot to the specific orders and locations it touched. These are the records the FSMA Food Traceability rule asks covered businesses to keep. For more, see traceability lot codes and FSMA recall readiness.
Cases of bottled water and jarred food pack a lot of weight into a small box, so carriers usually bill what they weigh. Packed badly, they dent and leak on the way. Some partners never check carrier rates against that real weight, and some ship heavy cases in thin cartons. Either way you pay more to ship, and more again for damaged orders, and both come out of your margin. We ship heavy cases on their real weight and match the carton to what each case weighs. Our guide to heavy and dense beverage freight optimization goes further, and shipping itself runs through our freight and heavy-case shipping service.
Food and drink sales come in bursts. Demand can jump with any of these:
If your partner runs out, ships late or starts making mistakes in those weeks, those sales are gone. You can keep inventory in several of our warehouses, which reach 99.77% of the US in 1-3 day ground, so orders ship from whichever one holds your stock closest to the customer. An order placed before the daily cut-off can ship the same day. Each pick is scanned, and dated stock still goes out nearest date first. Ask any partner, us included, how it staffs and plans for your peak, and bring your forecast to that conversation.
Some invoices show one figure per order and nothing else. You can't tell which part costs the most. You also can't tell whether you're paying for damage and reshipments caused by your partner's own packing. A bill like that also keeps the other four problems out of view. Ask any partner for each cost priced on its own line. Our guide to food and beverage fulfillment cost explains what goes into each one.
Most of the risk in a switch sits in the handoff. Dated stock leaves one building and has to be counted into another. Done carelessly, orders stall or nobody can say which lot is which. We receive your stock and count it in. For each lot, we record the traceability lot code and best-by date at the dock. We confirm the count by barcode scan before any order is sent to that stock.
Orders from your store, marketplaces and retailers reach us through BestOMS, with Deposco behind it and Dropstream handling the channel connectors, so nobody types them in again. You can split SKUs across our warehouses so the first orders out the door leave from the one holding your stock nearest each customer, on 1-3 day ground to 99.77% of the US, and heavy cases are priced on what they actually weigh on the scale. Moving every SKU at once or in stages around your busy season is a planning call for your catalog, not a fixed rule. Send us your SKU list and peak dates, and our team will plan the timing with you.
A new partner only solves the problems it is set up to handle. Check these three things first, or you may swap one poor fit for another.
How it rotates dated stock. Ask whether the new partner ships by best-by or use-by date rather than by arrival. Ask, too, whether it flags short-dated lots and holds them back from the picking shelves. A warehouse that handles food like any other stock will repeat the problem you are trying to leave. See FEFO vs FIFO for food and beverage for how the two methods differ.
Whether its warehouses suit your products. Find out whether the new partner's storage matches what each product needs to stay safe. Ours is dry and ambient, so a product that must stay cold to be safe is outside what we take. Where the line between shelf-stable and cold-chain falls is covered in dry / ambient vs cold-chain food fulfillment.
Its registration and food-safety records. A switch is a good time to check the paperwork for both warehouses, the one you are leaving and the one you are considering. Our FDA-registered food facility guide explains the two requirements. Ask each for its registration number and for how it documents its preventive controls. Don't take either from a marketing page, ours included. These questions, and more, are in our list of questions to ask a food and beverage 3PL.
No count settles it, and a pattern tells you more than any one miss. If your partner owns a problem and fixes it, the relationship is working. If two or more keep coming back on your best-selling SKUs after you've raised them, it's time to move. Staying has costs you can count:
If you're weighing a move, two of our guides help. Food and beverage fulfillment cost explains the main costs, so you can compare partners on the same terms. Questions to ask a food and beverage 3PL gives you a checklist to put to any warehouse you're considering.
When the same problems keep coming back after you've raised them. Short-dated or near-expiry product reaching customers is one. So is a recall your partner can't quickly trace to a single lot. Others are overpaying to ship heavy cases of bottles and cans, falling behind when demand peaks, and a per-order price you can't break down. Any warehouse can have one bad week. A pattern your current partner can't fix is the reason to move.
Five come up again and again with food and drink. Short-dated stock goes out to customers, or expired units get written off. A recall can't be narrowed down to the one lot it touched. Heavy cases of beverages and canned goods cost too much to ship. Peak demand swamps the warehouse. And the bill is one price per order with nothing broken out. Each of these comes from how the warehouse works rather than from bad luck, so they tend to repeat until something about the partner changes.
The move itself is where the risk sits, so we count your stock in as it arrives. At our dock we record each lot's traceability code and best-by date. That count is checked in BestOMS, with Deposco behind it, before any orders go to that stock. You can spread your stock across our warehouses, which reach 99.77% of the US in 1-3 day ground. Ask our team how long the move would take for your number of SKUs.
Check three things, because a new partner only fixes problems it is set up to handle. First, ask whether it rotates stock by best-by date and stops short-dated lots before they reach the picking shelves. Second, check that its warehouses suit your products. Ours are dry and ambient, so a SKU that has to stay cold isn't a fit for us. Third, ask for its FDA registration and, separately, for how it documents its preventive controls.
No rule says you must. It depends on your catalog and when your busy seasons fall. We receive your stock one lot at a time, recording each lot's code and date, and you can place it in more than one of our warehouses, so moving in stages is possible when that suits your calendar. Send us your SKU list and peak dates, and our team will work out the order of the move with you.
We count your stock in, lot by lot, as it arrives. Each lot's traceability code and best-by date go into the system at the dock. We confirm the count by barcode scan before any order is sent to that stock. Orders from all your sales channels come in through BestOMS, using Dropstream's channel connectors. You can place SKUs in several of our warehouses, so the first orders ship from whichever one holds your stock closest to the customer. Our team will plan the move for your catalog with you.