Sizing a month of charcoal for a grill kitchen

Plenty of grill kitchens guess their monthly charcoal need the same way. Someone notices the last sack is nearly empty and says, “send what we had last time.” That works while business is steady. Add a second outlet, longer opening hours or a busy season and the guess drifts. Either the charcoal runs out in the middle of a weekend, or the store room fills with sacks that sit for weeks.

This note shows how to work out your monthly charcoal need from data you already have. There is no clever formula. You need three numbers and a notebook.

Start from one cooking session, not from one month

Your monthly charcoal need is too big to picture. Break it into something you can weigh yourself: one session. A session is one lighting of the grill until it is put out, such as the lunch service or the evening service.

For one week, write down for each session:

• which grill or stove was lit (the big grill, the small stove, or both);
• how many scoops or baskets of charcoal went in at the start;
• how often you topped up during service;
• the time it was lit and the time it went out.

Weigh one full basket once, then use the same basket every day. You do not have to weigh each session. Counting baskets is enough.

The three numbers you multiply

After a week you hold three figures:

1. Average charcoal per session. Baskets times the weight of one basket, averaged.
2. Sessions per month. Trading days times sessions per day. Count the days you really open, not calendar days.
3. Grills lit at the same time. If your first figure is per grill, multiply by the number of grills.

The base monthly charcoal need is the three multiplied together. Here is a fill-in example, not a reference figure: if one session uses 6 kg, there are 50 sessions a month and one grill is lit, the base need is 300 kg. Yours will differ, and that is fine. The kind of charcoal, the size of the lumps and the way you manage the fire all play a part.

Add three layers of safety

The base need is not yet an order. Add:

• A seasonal layer. If some months are plainly busier, such as school holidays or the fasting month for a kitchen that serves at sunset, note the gap from a normal month. Do not guess. Use last year’s notes if you have them.
• A waste layer. Lump charcoal makes crumbs and chips in transit, and some grills cannot use crumbs. Ask sales how crumbs are treated in the quotation, then record how much you throw away on the first delivery.
• A lead-time layer. How many days pass between your request and sacks arriving at your door? If nobody can say, ask for it in writing. Your safety stock must cover that gap plus one late delivery.

The result is three figures, not one: a normal month, a busy month and a reorder point. The reorder point is the stock left on the day you must send your next request.

Check it against your storage

Charcoal should not be piled anywhere it fits. Before you agree a quantity, measure your store room. Ask yourself three things: will one whole delivery fit, is the space dry and away from sparks, and who moves the sacks. If space only covers two weeks of use, order more often in smaller quantities and talk to sales about staged deliveries. Do not force one large shipment just because the per-unit price looks lower.

Separate what you burn from what you resell

A trader who resells has one more calculation: the selling unit. Do your customers buy by the small sack, by the kilo or by the basket? Write down how the units relate: the weight that comes in, the weight you split off and the loss when you split. Wholesale quotations nearly always use the shipping unit, so your selling unit has to be translated before you compare prices.

From notes to a request

With these figures your request to sales is already clear. Name your business type, the grill, the normal and busy-season need, the delivery city and whether you want a sample first. Packing, schedule and price are fixed at quotation, not on this page.

Kora lists lump shell charcoal in grades A and B, with fixed carbon, water and ash limits you can read on the lump charcoal page. The items it does not print, such as lump size range and small sacks for domestic buyers, are marked there as “ask sales”.

Send your notes

Have your per-session figures? Send them through the contact page: grill type, normal need, busy-season need and your city. The form is saved, then WhatsApp opens with those details. The first reply comes within two business days.