AlbaA Monday morning at a fine-dining restaurant.
The full journey, end to end — from the moment Alba notices your Sassicaia is at one bottle to the moment the new delivery is on the shelf and the inventory is up to date.
Sales come in overnight
Your POS runs through dinner service. Alba reads the new depletions overnight (CSV upload today, email-forwarded automatic ingest soon) and updates the stock for every wine you sold. A 2018 Sassicaia just dropped from 3 bottles to 1.
9:00 AM — the engine wakes up
The reorder engine runs daily on the schedule you set. It walks every active beverage, projects how many will be left when the next delivery actually arrives, and flags whatever would land at or below its reorder point. Sassicaia triggers — projected stock 1, reorder point 2.
It builds a proposal
For each distributor with at least one critical wine, Alba builds an order with three options (A = critical only, B = critical + Priority 1, C = wider net). It respects the distributor's cutoff, lead time, sales unit, and minimum order. If the smallest option is below minimum, it auto-pads with extra bottles so the order is always actionable.
It reaches you on WhatsApp
Alba ships the proposal on whichever channel you live on — WhatsApp by default, with email in parallel as a safety net. You can pick SMS or email-only from your settings. The portal carries the same proposal if you'd rather tap than type.
You reply A
One letter. Or one tap on the portal. Alba understands free-form too — “take A but drop two bottles of Chianti” works on WhatsApp / SMS / portal. The moment you confirm, the proposal moves to Confirmed by manager, and Alba composes the outgoing order to the rep.
The order goes to your supplier
Branded order email with line items, account number, payment terms, deliver-to address, and a one-click button the supplier can use to push back if the order can't be fulfilled. Same payload also goes to their WhatsApp if you've set their phone — most suppliers reply faster on WhatsApp than on email.
| Item | Qty | Line |
|---|---|---|
| Bolgheri Sassicaia | 3 btl | $660 |
| Champagne Brut | 3 btl | $300 |
| Chianti Classico Riserva | 12 btl | $780 |
| Total | 18 btl | $1,740 |
The proposal is now waiting on the distributor
Status flips from Confirmed by manager to Waiting for distributor. The ball is on the supplier's side. You see it in the portal, and on the proposals list, with a clear status pill.
Delivery day — Alba checks in
On the expected delivery date Alba sends a quick “did it arrive?” on your preferred channel with two tappable choices: Yes, received / Not yet — ask tomorrow. One tap and stock updates automatically.
Stock auto-updates the moment you confirm received
Tapping “Yes” adds the line-item bottles back into your inventory. No spreadsheet, no manual count. The order moves to Received. The cycle is closed and the engine is free to propose again next time something hits critical.
Tap “Ask Alba” any time
Beyond the reorder loop, there's a sommelier-friend AI that knows your stock, prices, recent sales, distributor offers, and general wine knowledge. Ask anything in plain language — in English or Italian.
The numbers a POS can't give you
At any time, the insights page shows your acceptance rate, your reply time, on-time delivery per supplier, and the count of stockouts Alba caught in time. Plus a weekly revenue trend, day-of-week pattern, and projected stockouts based on current velocity.
That's the whole loop.
Eleven steps for one bottle. Repeat for every wine, every distributor, every cycle — automatically. The manager only gets pinged when something actually needs them.