Operator Insights: The Lane Cellars

The Lane Cellars is an independent bottle shop in Orange that specialises in boutique wine, beer and cider. They recently joined Kaddy to help streamline their once taxing ordering process. Read on to hear in owner Campbell Hedley’s words how Kaddy helped them run a more efficient operation.

1. What’s your story? How did The Lane Cellars come about?

We’re a small independent bottle shop in Orange, NSW, the brainchild of 2 guys, Campbell Hedley and David Cumming, who, between them, thought they knew a bit about beer and wine. We opened the doors in December 2018, and have been steadily growing our selection of independent beers and wines ever since. We only stock Indie Beer from Australian and a handful of New Zealand breweries, while our wine offering combines a large range of local drops with an eclectic selection of the best winemakers and regions from the rest of the country.

Orange is a thriving regional centre, with a vibrant food and wine scene, and some of the best cool climate wines in the country, so we’re very lucky to have support of both visitors and locals, but the appetite for quality craft beer and out of region wines from locals in particular has also been really encouraging.

2. Talk us through the challenge you faced before using Kaddy?

Because of our focus on independents and small producers, we purchase most of our products directly from suppliers. And because our point of difference is range rather than volume, we run very low levels of stock in each SKU. The upshot of this is that we have ended up regularly ordering from a huge number of suppliers, supplying a store that it is around 80sqm in size! With 150+ active suppliers, this can make ordering a bit of a challenge…

3. Talk us through how Kaddy has helped to resolve this problem for you?

Kaddy has given us two huge benefits - the ability to centralise the ordering for many suppliers to a single platform, without compromising our commitment to supporting independents; and a way to quickly assess what stock is available and what is new and interesting that we might want to take a look at. Previously, we have had to go back and forth with suppliers to find out what's in stock, what has just been released etc.

It’s also been great to standardise our ordering to a single platform, and to have predictable, standardised payment terms across a range of suppliers.

4. What was the resulting impact on your business?

The benefit has been a simplified approach to ordering and sourcing new stock, as well as streamlined invoicing and payment processing. This translates to a wider range of products for our customers and a more efficient use of time by us and our staff, leaving us more time to focus on running and growing the business

Are you over doing unnecessary ordering related admin? Watch a free two minute demo of Kaddy to understand first hand how we can streamline your business.

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