The Tether Newsletter — Issue #2
Hello There! 👋
In today’s issue, we talk all about Food & Beverage. We've been investing a lot of time in this industry over the last few weeks along with shipping two major features & spending time with dozens of Food & Bev brands at NOSH Live. Here's the latest.
This issue's (AI-assisted) poetic motto:
Expiry dates loom. Lead times slip. Tether will keep your plans in grip. 🤝
Feature Spotlight:
Replenishment Forecast 📦
TLDR: Tether is killing inventory spreadsheets. We can now tell you what to order & when!
The Problem:
Figuring out how much to order and when means juggling demand forecasts, lead times, open orders, safety stock targets, and ordering cadences—often across multiple warehouses. Most planners piece this together manually.
What We Built:
Replenishment Forecast — Tether now generates a forecast for exactly how much inventory you need at every warehouse for every SKU, factoring in:
- Demand forecast
- Lead time
- Current open orders
- Target safety stock levels
- Ordering frequency
- Bundle sales (we forecast inventory for core SKUs, not the bundle)
Also shipped: Open orders now automatically flow into your inventory forecast, so you always see the true picture of what's already on the way along side what you already have on hand. 🙌
Want the full technical release notes? Reply "release notes" and we'll send the changelog.
Why Food & Bev Brands Need Demand Planning 🍽️
TLDR: Spreadsheets work early… They also break fast.
Food & beverage planning is harder than most categories. Why?
- Shelf life is a hard constraint — you're not just planning how much, but how much can sell before it expires
- Promotions and seasonality drive huge swings — BFCM, summer spikes, influencer pushes
- Omnichannel = different rules per channel — DTC, Amazon, and retail all have distinct service expectations
- Supply chains are constrained — co-packer minimums, long ingredient lead times, MOQs
🔗 We wrote a full blog post on why modern Food & Bev brands need demand planning. 🔗
Brand Highlight: CHUH Matcha 🍵
We sat down with Andrew Schundler, founder of CHUH Matcha, a RTD matcha latte brand out of Maine.
Key takeaways for early-stage Food & Bev founders:
- Retail pulled harder than DTC — Andrew launched expecting DTC-first, but retail demand spiked immediately
- 4-5 week production lead times mean you need to plan one full cycle ahead, even with limited history
- Ingredient risk is real — matcha costs jumped 50% due to a weak Japanese harvest; lead times stretched to 4-5 months
📺 Watch the full conversation →
Tether in the Field: NOSH Live + LvlUp Ventures 🎉
Gary spent last week in SoCal at 🔗 NOSH Live and the 🔗 LvlUp Ventures Holiday Party. He met with some amazing founders, operators, and brand builders across the Food & Bev space.
The universal theme? Teams are rethinking their operations stack. From forecasting to inventory workflows to supply chain visibility, the pain is real. The willingness to modernize is also accelerating, which is great tailwinds for us.
About Tether
Tether is the operational intelligence platform for demand-planning and inventory optimization at high-growth D2C/CPG brands. We replace fragmented spreadsheets and manual workflows with unified forecasting, omni-channel sales analytics, proactive inventory health monitoring, and automated planning.
Questions or feedback? Just reply—we read every message.
Know someone who still forecasts in spreadsheets? Forward this to them.