The one-page wholesale price list that answers a café's questions before they ask them

The email that gets closed at 7am

A café manager opens your email at seven in the morning, standing between a bread delivery and the first coffee. They have maybe ninety seconds before the doors open. They want to put an order in.

What they find is a lovely photo of your product and a line saying to get in touch for prices. No pack size. No idea which day you deliver, or by when they'd have to order to get it. So they close the email, mean to come back to it later, and don't. You never hear from them, and you assume they weren't interested.

They were interested. They just couldn't act in the ninety seconds they had.

I spent about a decade as a chef, most of it on the receiving end of producers' lists, and later I was the producer sending them: I grew microgreens and sold them to restaurants and chefs. I have written these lists and I have ordered off other people's. The ones that got an order were never the prettiest. They were the ones I could act on without sending a question back.

The five lines a buyer needs before they can say yes

A wholesale price list is not a menu. A menu is there to tempt. A price list is there to let a busy kitchen commit to an order without having to email you first. That means it has to pre-answer the questions they would otherwise ask.

There are five.

Price, in the unit you actually sell. Per punnet, per tray, per loaf, per kilo. The number a buyer needs is the one that lands on their invoice, not a vague sense that you're reasonably priced. "Price on application" is not a price.

How it's packed. A punnet of what size. A tray of how many. A loaf at what weight. The chef is working out portions and covers in their head, and they can't do that against "a bag".

Which days you deliver. Kitchens plan the week around their deliveries. If they don't know your day, they can't slot you in, and they won't guess.

The cut-off to order for those days. The single line that decides whether an order reaches you in time to pack it or lands the night before and can't be filled.

How they pay. On the day, weekly account, thirty days. A buyer with a strict accounts process needs to know this before they start, not after the first delivery.

Get those five onto one page and the first order arrives without a back-and-forth. Leave them off and you spend a week trading messages to assemble what could have sat on the page from the start.

Why "message me for a list" costs you orders

Every step you add between the buyer and the order is a place they can put it down.

"Price on application" is a step. "Message me and I'll send the current list" is a step. "DM me for the wholesale sheet" is two. Each one asks a person who is mid-service, or wedging in admin at the end of a long day, to start a conversation and then wait for you to reply, and then read the reply, and then order. Somewhere in that chain the moment passes.

I felt this from both sides. As a chef, a producer who made me chase the basics went to the bottom of the pile. The produce might be lovely; ordering it was still work, and work gets put off. As a grower, every order that arrived across a scattered set of messages was one I then had to reassemble by hand into something I could pack from. A list that answers the questions up front removes the chase for both of you.

The order cut-off belongs on the page, not in your head

Of the five lines, the cut-off is the one most producers keep in their head, and it's the one that causes the most grief.

Without it on the page you get the 9pm message: "any chance I can still get some for tomorrow?" Now you either say no and feel like you've let them down, or you say yes and blow up a production plan you'd already settled. Neither is good, and both were avoidable with one line.

When I was planning production off scattered orders and memory, I got it wrong in both directions. Some weeks I made too much and it went to waste. Other weeks I was short. A stated cut-off doesn't fix your planning on its own, but it draws the line that lets you plan at all: everything in by Thursday 5pm is Friday's delivery, and everything after it is next week. Put that sentence on the list and most of the late scramble stops.

Pack size and minimum order do quiet work

Pack size and minimum order look like admin. They're actually the two lines that protect your margin without you ever having to negotiate.

State the pack size once and you've set the unit the whole conversation runs on. State a minimum order once and you've ruled out the drop that costs you more in packing and driving than it brings in, without having to turn anyone down in a message. Both do their work silently, on the page, so you're never the one bringing up money awkwardly after the fact.

If you don't state them, you'll end up agreeing to them case by case anyway, in a dozen slightly different versions you then have to remember. Once, on the page, is easier to hold to.

The both-sides test

Here's the check I'd run before you send anything. Read your own list as the chef receiving it mid-service, with the phone in one hand and a pan in the other.

Can they place a full order from it without emailing you a single question? If yes, it's done. If no, find the line that would generate the question. When there is a question, it's usually one of the five: they can see the price but not the pack, or the delivery day but not the cut-off.

That missing line is the reply email you keep having to send. It's the same handful of questions coming back again and again, and every one of them is a gap on the page.

A one-page layout you can copy today

This fits in any word processor or spreadsheet. No app required. Fill in your own words and numbers.

Top of the page:

• Your business name, and one line of what you make
• "Wholesale price list" and the date it's valid from
• Your name and the best way to reach you for orders

A short block, before the products:

• Delivery days (and areas, if you don't deliver everywhere)
• Order cut-off: the day and time an order has to be in by for the next delivery
• Payment terms
• Minimum order, if you set one

Then the products, as a simple table:

| Product | Pack (the unit you sell) | Price per pack | Notes | | : | : | : | : | | [product name] | [e.g. tray of X, punnet of Xg, loaf at Xg] | [your price] | [seasonal, made to order, allergen note] |

Keep the table to the columns above. The buyer reads left to right: what it is, how it comes, what it costs, anything they need to know. If a product is only available some of the year, or is made to order rather than held, the notes column is where that goes, so nobody orders something you can't send.

At the foot:

• One line on exactly how to place an order (email, a form, a phone number)
• Allergen or dietary information, or a note that says it is available on request

That is the whole thing. One page. If it runs to two, the products have outgrown the format and you'd want a proper catalogue, but most producers selling to a handful of accounts will fit comfortably on one.

Once you have built it

A one-page document does the job on its own, and for a lot of producers that's all it needs to be. Build it, send it, and the first order should arrive without a question attached.

If you'd rather the same list didn't live as a file you re-send and re-version every time a price changes, that's roughly what makeweek is for: a catalogue with your products and pack sizes, a price list you can share, and the orders coming back against it in one place rather than scattered across messages you then have to reassemble. Whether it lives in a spreadsheet or in makeweek, the test is the same. Read it as the chef at 7am, and make sure they can order without emailing you first.