Your distributors want payment at delivery and the holiday order is three times a normal week. What funds the stock-up?

In a number of states the payment terms between an alcohol wholesaler and a retailer are set by statute rather than negotiated. Texas's cash law, for example, requires retailers to pay distributors for malt beverages at delivery, with electronic transfer, cashier's checks and similar instruments counting as cash; other states run similar cash or short-credit rules, and some require electronic payment for every invoice. A retailer who falls behind can be reported to the state and placed on a delinquent list that every distributor in the state can see.

So the thirty days of supplier credit that a hardware store or a restaurant quietly runs on does not exist for a package store. Every case is paid for at the door, and the holiday order is paid for at the door three times over.

A working capital loan or a cash advance on the store's last three to six months of deposits, funded in one to three business days. Liquor stores are card-heavy and card settlements are the easiest deposit pattern in the world to underwrite, so approval is rarely the problem. Amounts run half to one and a half times a month's deposits, which for most stores covers the difference between a normal week's orders and a December week's several times over.

Apply in October. The statements a funder reads in October are July through September — a normal quarter. The same application on December first is read against a November that was already spending ahead, and the offer shrinks for it.

A true holdback advance, repaid as a percentage of card settlements, fits this business well: the payment is largest in the December weeks that generated the need and smallest in the January weeks that did not. Ask for it by name and read the reconciliation clause.

Distributors set minimum order quantities and values, and the holiday allocations for the products that sell are often available only to stores that take the full case count. That means the stock-up is not just larger; it is lumpier, arriving in a handful of large deliveries each paid in full that day. Size the funding to the delivery schedule, not to an average week, and keep a few days of buffer for the allocation that arrives early.

A business line of credit applied for in spring, against the previous holiday's statements, is drawn in November and repaid from December and January sales, costing nothing from February to October. It is harder to qualify for than an advance and it turns the stock-up from an annual application into a routine draw. A store with two years of clean statements should have one.