seasonal-stock

---
name: seasonal-stock
description: Turns a peak you have never traded into a dated order list with a cash figure against every line, sized to what your fridges and cellar can lawfully hold, with the freeze plan and the waste route agreed before the first delivery arrives. Use when a bank holiday weekend, a festival, a heatwave or a Christmas run is coming and you are about to order more than you normally order.
---

# Order for a peak you have never had, without burying cash in a cellar

You give this your trading history, your supplier list with lead times, and the dates of the peak. You get back a dated order file: every line sized to a stated number of covers, checked against the physical cold and dry storage you actually have, with the cost of over-ordering and the cost of under-ordering priced separately so you can see which mistake is cheaper, plus the freeze and redeploy plan for the surplus and the waste route booked in advance. It will not tell you how busy you are going to be. It makes the number you assume explicit so that it can be argued with before the money leaves.

## What it does

1. **Write the peak down as dates, hours and covers before a single line is ordered.** Name the exact trading days, not "the bank holiday weekend". For a 2027 peak that means the real dates from the published list: Friday 26 March, Monday 29 March, Monday 3 May, Monday 31 May, Monday 30 August, and the Christmas substitutes Monday 27 December and Tuesday 28 December. Then write three numbers for each day: the covers you expect, the number you would be disappointed by, and the number you physically could not serve with the kitchen and the staff you have. The last of those is the ceiling the order is sized against, because ordering above the number you can serve buys food for a service that cannot happen. An order sized against a feeling cannot be checked afterwards, which is why the same mistake is made every year.

2. **Measure your holding capacity before you measure demand, because the law caps it.** Walk the site with a tape and record usable shelf metres at chill, freezer volume, cellar footprint and dry store. Schedule 4 of the Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013 makes it an offence to keep food that supports the growth of pathogenic micro-organisms at or in food premises above 8 degrees Celsius, with a narrow tolerance allowing food to be held above 8 degrees "for service or on display for sale for a period of less than four hours". Freezers hold at minus 18 degrees Celsius. So the chilled order is capped by the cubic capacity you can genuinely hold at or below 8 degrees with the doors opening every ninety seconds in a hot kitchen, not by the size of the walk-in on paper. An order larger than the cold store is a decision to break the law or to fill a bin.

3. **Split every line into three shelf-life classes and buy each on different rules.** GOV.UK is precise about the difference: "Use-by dates relate to the safety of food, whereas best before dates relate to quality." Class one is use-by stock, bought to the day and never bought ahead for a weekend that might not arrive. Class two is best-before stock, where an unsold case is a quality and a cash problem but not a safety one, so buying ahead is a financing decision you may reasonably make. Class three is non-perishable: bottled beer, spirits, glassware, packaging, disposables, where the only risk is cash sitting still. Owners routinely apply class three thinking to class one stock because the supplier offers a better price per case. That discount is only real if the food is sold.

4. **Build the demand number from two windows of your own history and say which one you used.** Take the recent window, typically the last four weeks, and the same calendar period last year. Where they agree, you have a number. Where they disagree, that disagreement is information rather than noise: a line running at three times its usual rate is either a genuine trend or one large booking, and those need opposite responses. Where you have less than a full year of history for this period, do not invent a seasonal multiplier. Say plainly that there is no prior peak to read and ask the owner for their own estimate, then record the estimate as theirs. A multiplier built from nine months of trading is a guess with a decimal point on it.

5. **Size each line to cover plus lead time, then subtract everything already in the building or already inbound.** The stock has to last from the day it lands until the next delivery lands, so a line sized without the lead time runs short by exactly the lead time every single cycle. Then take off what is on the shelf, what is in the cellar and what is already on order with another supplier, because double-ordering across two suppliers in the week before a peak is the commonest way a small venue ends up with three months of something. Show cash on every line, not units. The owner is making a decision about money, and forty-eight kilos means nothing while four hundred and twenty pounds means something.

6. **Price being wrong in both directions, per line, and let the smaller number decide.** For each line write the cost of over-ordering, which is the purchase cost of the unsold units plus the cost of disposing of them, and the cost of under-ordering, which is the lost gross profit on the dishes or drinks you could not sell plus whatever the substitution costs you in goodwill. These are rarely symmetrical. Running out of a garnish costs a conversation. Running out of the one dish the promotion advertised costs the promotion. Burying nine hundred pounds in a chilled product with a four day use-by costs nine hundred pounds. Where the under-order cost is genuinely smaller, order less and say so in writing, because that decision will be questioned on the day.

7. **Write the freeze and redeploy plan line by line before the order goes, not after the peak.** GOV.UK states that "If you freeze food before the use-by date, it will not deteriorate as bacteria cannot grow on frozen food", that the freezer should be kept at minus 18 degrees Celsius, and that "Once the food has been defrosted, you need to use it within 24 hours". It also says that food cooked before the use-by date should be cooled, kept in the fridge and eaten within 48 hours or frozen. So for every class one line, name in advance what happens to the surplus: frozen on which day, by whom, into what dish, or cooked down on the Sunday night into a Tuesday special. A surplus with a written destination is a menu. A surplus with no destination is waste, and the decision gets made at eleven at night by whoever is closing.

8. **Book the waste route and the measurement before the peak, because the duty already applies.** Under Simpler Recycling in England, workplaces must separate dry recyclables, food waste and residual waste, and GOV.UK is blunt that for food waste "This rule applies no matter how little food waste you have." The duty applied from 31 March 2025, except for businesses with fewer than 10 full-time equivalent employees, who have until 31 March 2027. A peak generates several times the normal volume, so confirm the collection frequency with the contractor before the weekend rather than discovering the bin is full on the Sunday. Then measure what actually goes in it: WRAP's Guardians of Grub campaign publishes a 7-Day Tracking Sheet, bin labels and a Food Tracking Calculator, which the campaign says "automatically calculates what the food thrown away is costing you". Seven days across the peak is enough to make next year's order arguable.

9. **Issue the order as a dated file with a named owner and the assumption beside every line.** One row per line: supplier, lead time, order date, delivery date, quantity, unit cost, total cash, the covers number it was sized against, the shelf-life class, the storage location, and the freeze or redeploy plan. Put the build date and the source of every figure in the footer. Article 5 of retained Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 requires a food business operator to put in place procedures based on the HACCP principles and to establish "documents and records commensurate with the nature and size of the food business", so this file belongs inside the food safety management system rather than in a notebook behind the bar. Next year's order is built by opening this file and correcting it, which takes an hour instead of a fortnight.

## Then it checks

1. Every order line names the number of covers it was sized against, and no line is sized against a word such as "busy" or "as last year" with no figure attached.
2. The total chilled volume ordered fits the measured capacity that can be held at or below 8 degrees Celsius, and the total frozen volume fits the measured freezer, with both figures recorded in the file.
3. Every line carries its shelf-life class, and no use-by line has been bought further ahead than its shelf life allows once the delivery date is counted.
4. Every line shows quantity, unit cost and total cash, and the file totals the cash so the owner sees one number before approving.
5. Every use-by line carries a written freeze or redeploy plan naming the day, the person and the destination dish, or is explicitly marked as accepted waste risk with the cash figure beside it.
6. The waste collection has been confirmed for the peak dates with the contractor, the measurement method is named, and the file carries its build date and the date each source was read.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is. A purchase order that goes to a supplier as the owner goes to the owner first.
- Never state an expected uplift, a sector average covers figure or a benchmark food cost percentage for a single independent venue. No such published figure exists for one site, and an owner who orders against a borrowed number has bought stock for somebody else's business.
- Never apply a seasonal multiplier without a full year of history for that period. Where the history is not there, say so and ask the owner, then record the estimate as theirs rather than as a calculation.
- Never size an order without subtracting what is already in the building and already on order. Count the cellar with your own eyes before the order goes.
- Refuse to size a chilled order above the storage that can lawfully hold it at or below 8 degrees Celsius, whatever the discount on offer and whatever the owner instructs. The correct output in that case is the capped order plus a written note of the capacity gap, not the larger order with a warning attached.
- Never treat a bulk discount as a saving until the unsold portion has been priced.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their own recipes, supplier terms and storage before any order is placed, and for their environmental health officer to see as part of the food safety management system. It applies published food safety and waste requirements to a purchasing plan; it is not a food safety verdict and it does not certify compliance with anything.

## Built from
- The Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013, Schedule 4, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/2996/schedule/4/made, read 16 September 2026: the 8 degrees Celsius chill holding offence, the 63 degrees Celsius hot holding requirement and the four hour service tolerance, which cap the chilled order in step 2 and the refusal in the Rules.
- GOV.UK, "Food labelling: best before and use-by dates", https://www.gov.uk/understanding-food-labelling/best-before-and-use-by-dates, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026: the safety versus quality distinction behind the three shelf-life classes in step 3, and the freezing, minus 18 degrees, 24 hour defrost and 48 hour cooked rules that make the freeze plan in step 7 workable.
- GOV.UK, "Simpler Recycling: workplace recycling in England", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/simpler-recycling-workplace-recycling-in-england, published 29 November 2024, last updated 3 October 2025, read 16 September 2026: the three separated waste streams, the 31 March 2025 duty, the fewer than 10 full-time equivalent employees extension to 31 March 2027 and the "no matter how little food waste you have" wording, all in step 8.
- WRAP, "Guardians of Grub: Resources", https://guardiansofgrub.com/resources/, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026: the 7-Day Tracking Sheet, the bin labels, the Stock Control Sheet and the Food Tracking Calculator that make the measurement in step 8 something an owner can actually run.
- Retained Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 on the hygiene of foodstuffs, Article 5, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2004/852/article/5, read 16 September 2026: the HACCP duty and the requirement for "documents and records commensurate with the nature and size of the food business", which is why step 9 files the order inside the food safety management system.
- GOV.UK, "UK bank holidays", https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays, last updated 24 November 2025, read 16 September 2026: the 2027 England and Wales dates and the substitute day rule used to write the peak down as real dates in step 1.

# seasonal-stock

## You are given
The trading dates of one peak for a UK hospitality business, with the expected, disappointing and physically-impossible cover counts already decided for each day by the owner. A measured storage survey: usable chilled capacity in litres or shelf metres with the temperature it holds, freezer capacity in litres with its temperature, cellar footprint and dry store footprint. A supplier list with, per supplier, the lead time in days, the minimum order value and the pack sizes. Sales or usage history as a CSV covering at least the last four weeks and, where it exists, the same calendar period in the previous year. A current stock count with the date and time it was taken. A list of anything already on order with its supplier and expected delivery date. Per line, the shelf-life class already judged by Claude as exactly `use-by`, `best-before` or `non-perishable`, the storage location it will occupy, and the freeze or redeploy plan in the owner's own words. The judgements about how busy the peak will be, which shelf-life class a line belongs to, and what happens to the surplus have all been made before you start. You do not remake them.

## Produce
Write into a `./seasonal-stock-output/` folder:

1. `order-lines.csv` with these columns in this order: `line_ref`, `item_name`, `supplier`, `shelf_life_class`, `lead_time_days`, `order_date`, `delivery_date`, `pack_size`, `packs_ordered`, `units_ordered`, `unit_cost_gbp`, `line_total_gbp`, `covers_sized_against`, `storage_location`, `stock_on_hand_units`, `already_inbound_units`, `net_units_required`, `rounded_direction`. `line_ref` is L001 upward. `shelf_life_class` is exactly one of `use-by`, `best-before`, `non-perishable`. `rounded_direction` is exactly one of `up`, `down`, `exact`. All money to two decimal places in GBP.
2. `storage-capacity.csv` with columns: `storage_location`, `capacity_measure`, `capacity_unit`, `holding_temperature_c`, `volume_committed_by_this_order`, `percent_committed`, `over_capacity`. One row per location plus a `TOTAL_CHILLED` and a `TOTAL_FROZEN` row. `over_capacity` is `yes` or `no`. Any row where `holding_temperature_c` is above 8 for a location holding `use-by` lines is listed in `gaps.md`.
3. `cost-of-being-wrong.csv` with columns: `line_ref`, `item_name`, `over_order_cost_gbp`, `over_order_components`, `under_order_cost_gbp`, `under_order_components`, `cheaper_mistake`, `quantity_implied`. `cheaper_mistake` is exactly one of `over`, `under`, `equal`. `quantity_implied` is the quantity the cheaper mistake points to, computed from the supplied figures only.
4. `demand-windows.csv` with columns: `line_ref`, `item_name`, `recent_window_units_per_day`, `recent_window_days`, `prior_year_units_per_day`, `prior_year_period`, `windows_disagree`, `window_used`, `owner_estimate_supplied`, `history_sufficient`. `windows_disagree` is `yes` where the two rates differ by more than a quarter. `window_used` is exactly one of `recent`, `prior_year`, `owner_estimate`. `history_sufficient` is `yes` only where a full year of history for this period was supplied.
5. `freeze-and-redeploy.csv` with columns: `line_ref`, `item_name`, `use_by_date`, `freeze_by_date`, `frozen_by_whom`, `destination_dish`, `redeploy_service_date`, `plan_supplied`. Every `use-by` line appears. Any row with `plan_supplied` of `no` is listed in `gaps.md`.
6. `waste-and-measurement.csv` with columns: `peak_date`, `collection_booked`, `contractor`, `streams_separated`, `tracking_sheet_in_place`, `measured_by_whom`. `streams_separated` lists which of `dry recyclables`, `food waste`, `residual` are confirmed. One row per trading day of the peak.
7. `order-summary.md` with the total cash of the order, the total cash by shelf-life class, the count of lines where the cheaper mistake is `under`, and the storage headroom left. Figures only, copied from the CSVs. No commentary and no recommendation.
8. `gaps.md` as a numbered list of: any line with no `covers_sized_against`; any storage location over capacity; any `use-by` line with no freeze or redeploy plan; any line with no lead time; any line where `history_sufficient` is `no` and no owner estimate was supplied; any peak day with no confirmed waste collection; any line whose delivery date falls after the first trading day; and any figure that could not be computed because an input was missing.

## Rules
- Codex measures, computes, records and checks. It never invents a cover count, a velocity, a lead time, a unit cost or a shelf life, never reclassifies a line, never rewords the owner's freeze plan, and never makes the judgement about how busy the peak will be.
- Never compute a demand figure for a line with fewer than the supplied minimum days of history. Write `history_sufficient` as `no` and list it in `gaps.md` rather than smoothing it over.
- Never apply a seasonal multiplier. Where prior year history exists, report both windows and which one was supplied for use. Where it does not, use the owner estimate and record it as supplied.
- Never size a chilled order above the supplied capacity that holds at or below 8 degrees Celsius. Cap the quantity at capacity, write the capped figure, and list the gap in `gaps.md`. Do not write the larger figure with a note.
- Never treat stock already on order as available twice. `net_units_required` always subtracts both `stock_on_hand_units` and `already_inbound_units`.
- Never write a sector average, an industry benchmark food cost percentage, an expected uplift or any figure sourced from outside the supplied files. No such published figure exists for a single independent venue.
- Never place an order, never email a supplier and never connect to a supplier portal. These files are drafts for the owner to send.
- Every quantity is rounded to the supplied pack size and `rounded_direction` says which way. Cash is recomputed from the rounded quantity, never from the unrounded one.
- Use British English, GBP and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their own recipes, supplier terms and storage before any order is placed, and for their environmental health officer to see as part of the food safety management system. It applies supplied requirements to a purchasing plan and is not a food safety verdict.

## Return
The absolute path of each file written, the row count of each CSV, the total cash of the order in GBP and the total by shelf-life class, the number of lines where `cheaper_mistake` is `under` and the cash those lines represent, the percentage of chilled and frozen capacity committed with any location over capacity named, the number of `use-by` lines with no freeze or redeploy plan, the number of lines with insufficient history and no owner estimate, the peak dates with no confirmed waste collection, and the `gaps.md` item count.