Estimating your cafe's milk consumption: litres to cartons

Step 1: Work out your own usage

Pick whichever method fits how your business already tracks stock -- there's no single "right" way to do this, and we don't have a per-drink or per-cafe figure to hand you instead:

• Check past supplier invoices or receipts for how much milk you bought over a given period
• Pull it from your POS/till data, if drinks are itemised there
• Count how many cartons you actually open over a week or two, if neither of the above is easy to pull

Whichever method you use, express it as litres per week -- that's the number Step 2 converts.

Step 2: The conversion constant -- 12 litres per carton

Every SusuTerbang cafe SKU currently packs out to exactly 12 litres per carton, regardless of unit size -- so you never need to think in units, just litres:

Weekly litres ÷ 12 = cartons per week (round up to the next whole carton).

Step 3: Build in an ordering buffer

Minimum order

3 cartons

Order confirmation

Manual — business owner replies to each WhatsApp order personally, within 24 hours. Future state (not yet built): AI chatbot handling first response.

Dispatch

Ad-hoc Lalamove booking per order, not scheduled/batched.

Same-day cutoff

Depends on stock at the designated stockist/hub for the delivery area (see data/delivery-zones.yaml). Same-day dispatch is normally not possible after approximately 3pm.

Because there's no fixed, automatically recurring delivery slot -- each order is placed and dispatched individually -- your raw cartons-per-week number isn't the full order plan. It's worth placing your order with some lead time and carrying a small buffer, rather than timing it precisely to run out. This is a real operational fact about how ordering currently works, not manufactured urgency.

Worked example

This is a hypothetical number used only to illustrate the arithmetic -- not a typical or average cafe figure, and not representative of real cafes generally. Say you've measured 30L used in a week: 30 ÷ 12 = 2.5, so round up to 3 cartons -- which also happens to match our current 3 cartons minimum order.

The SusuTerbang cafe SKUs this applies to

UHT:

• Farm Fresh Master Barista

  UHT, 1L x 12 per carton

• Farm Fresh Fresh Milk

  UHT, 1L x 12 per carton

• Yarra Professional Full Cream

  UHT, 1L x 12 per carton

• Yarra Full Cream

  UHT, 1L x 12 per carton

• Farm Fresh Oat Milk Original

  UHT, 1L x 12 per carton

• Farm Fresh Almond Milk Original

  UHT, 1L x 12 per carton

Pasteurised:

• Farm Fresh Fresh Milk

  Pasteurised, 1L x 12 per carton

• Farm Fresh Fresh Milk

  Pasteurised, 2L x 6 per carton

Plan your storage next

Once you know your carton volume, see Storage Planning for UHT and Chilled Milk for ambient shelf space and chiller capacity planning.

Still deciding which type to stock? See UHT vs Pasteurised Milk for Cafes for that decision first.

Ordering for your cafe

See Cafe Milk Supplier for the 3 cartons minimum order and how to request a quote.

Frequently asked questions