Depletion

What depletion means

Depletion is the rate at which stock leaves inventory through sale, pour, or consumption. In the wider drinks trade the term often describes shipments leaving a distributor's warehouse to retailers and restaurants; at the venue level it describes bottles and glasses leaving your own cellar. Either way, depletion measures outbound movement over time rather than a static quantity on hand.

Depletion is usually tracked per product or lot across a period, weekly, monthly, seasonally, to reveal how fast each wine actually moves. A wine that depletes steadily behaves very differently, operationally, from one that sells in occasional bursts.

Why it matters

Depletion rates drive almost every downstream decision: how much to reorder, when to reorder, which wines to feature, and which to discount or delist. Without reliable depletion data, purchasing is reactive and stockouts or overstock become routine. With it, you can set sensible par levels and reorder thresholds grounded in real velocity.

In a wine program, depletion emerges naturally from a complete movement history, every pour and sale is an outbound movement, and their sum over time is your depletion. Vinius captures these movements in inventory management, so depletion reflects what actually happened rather than a manual count.