Why cellar pulls lag behind covers by two days
A busy Saturday at the tables does not empty the same kegs on Saturday night. The bar often pours the delayed demand on Monday, when the kitchen is already ordering as if the week were quiet.
Food covers and wet sales move together in the dining room and then come apart in the cellar. Guests who stay for a second pint after a late sitting, staff drinks after a wedding, and the Sunday session that runs long all hit the keg after the kitchen has already counted the night as over.
We see this most clearly in pubs that send a standing order every Tuesday. The order is written from Monday's delivery frustration, not from Saturday's actual pour. The result is a cold room that is tight on the house bitter the week after a function and overstocked on a bottle that only sold during the function wine package.
A cellar allocation pack therefore does not copy the kitchen calendar line for line. It shifts beverage pull by a day or two where the house's own history shows that lag. The cellar lead should see that shift on the pull sheet, not discover it when the distributor's van is already in the yard.
If you photograph the cellar par card, photograph the dates of the last three functions as well. Those dates explain more empty lines than any annualised wet-sales percentage.