California, renowned for its wine country and craft beverage scene, presents unique challenges and opportunities for business that require alcohol warehousing. In this article, we examine the key characteristics that your 3PL provider should have to safely and efficiently store and distribute alcoholic beverages from its warehouse.

What is alcoholic beverage warehousing?

Alcohol warehousing is both straightforward and complex. It is straightforward in that most products (e.g., beer, wine and spirits) are palletized within the warehouse and stored at ambient temperatures – though some products do require temp-controlled warehousing. Products are then delivered from the warehouse to retailer and grocery DCs – sometimes by the same 3PL that handles the warehousing.

Alcohol warehousing is complex in that there are regulatory and security concerns; shipments of products tend to be heavyweight; and, as many products come in glass bottles, they are susceptible to damage.

5 characteristics of an alcohol warehousing 3PL in California

If you’re looking for a 3PL provider in California to provide warehousing services for alcoholic beverages, the following 5 characteristics are very important.

1. Compliance with regulations

To legally store alcoholic beverages in California, including beer, wine, and spirits, a 3PL must possess a Type 14 ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control) license. This license, specific to the state of California, is obtained through a meticulous process involving background checks, fingerprinting, and adherence to stringent regulations. Without this license, a logistics company cannot legally store alcohol.

You will also want to make sure that your 3PL provider is registered with the Food & Drug Administration (FDA).

2. Food and beverage certification

In addition to regulatory compliance, you will likely want to work with a 3PL that goes above and beyond to ensure the safety and integrity of your products. A common way to tell those in this category from the rest of the pack is certification of their facilities and operations through an entity like AIB International.

AIB International is one of the world’s foremost providers of training and certification programs related to food safety, quality management, process optimization, and recalls.

AIB certification requires an intensive audit and certification process. In order to receive AIB certification, 3PL providers must truly optimize operations and create the safest possible environment for food products, not just one that checks boxes associated with laws.

3. Integrated Services for Efficient Operations

Many companies take a siloed approach to 3PL partnering for product distribution: hiring one for drayage, one for warehousing, and several for OTR transportation. With an integrated logistics service approach, however, most or even all of these services may be performed and/or coordinated by a single provider – if that provider has the core competencies to handle all these services proficiently. This integrated approach can be vital in alcohol distribution, where speed is critical.

For example, you can lean on one provider to:

• perform drayage and transloading services for your imported products
• perform warehousing services for those products
• perform final delivery services – handling pick-ups, deliveries, and distribution to retailers and grocers efficiently

Your integrated 3PL can perform all needed tasks quickly and without delays. How? Because it owns the entire process. There is no waiting or guessing as to when the next step is going to happen.

4. Overweight Corridor Expertise

Speaking of imports, containerized beverages can be heavy. When shipping into California, it can pay serious dividends to work with a 3PL provider that operates within the Overweight Corridor.

Sitting just outside the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the Overweight Corridor (also known as the Heavy Container Corridor) is a 4-square-mile grid of local roads in which overweight containers (i.e., containers with a weight higher than allowed on U.S. roads – in many states 44,000 lbs) can be moved freely with trucks that have the proper permits.

Your integrated 3PL provider can dray your container(s) to its warehouse within the corridor where your products can be stored or transloaded and/or deconsolidated. With these services, a few pallets from the heavy container are unloaded so that the container is now street-legal and can be transported over the road for final delivery. The leftover pallets from your containers are then combined into a full truckload on a standard trailer.

The overall throughput cost for import transportation is typically reduced by 15-20% when you maximize the payload of each container you ship.

5. Value-Added Services

Within the warehouse, there is also a variety of value-added services you can rely on your 3PL to perform. For the alcohol beverage industry, these often include kitting and display building.

Kitting and assembly services. Kitting is the process of combining various individual items or components into a single package to meet the needs of the end consumer or retailer. At Weber Logistics, for example, we can create a wide variety of finished items, including club packs, sample packs, holiday baskets, literature kits and point of purchase displays.

Display building: Weber uses customer components to build a variety of displays (e.g., power wings, multi-packs, display caddies, clip strips, quarter pallets), while maintaining proper lot code markings and implementing strict quality assurance protocols.

Turn to Weber for alcoholic beverage warehousing and distribution in CA

If you’re looking for a true supply chain partnership with a provider that checks all of the boxes above and then some, get to know Weber Logistics. Alcohol beverage warehousing has long been a focus of ours and we maintain a ‘superior’ rating from AIB International). Also, we ship for many customers in the food and beverage sector and, therefore, have standing delivery appointments with all major retailers and grocers throughout the West Region. To learn more about our capabilities, contact Weber today.