How much milk does your coffee shop need per week?

How do you work out how much milk to order?

Every milk order is the same four lines of arithmetic. What makes it right is not the arithmetic, it is knowing how many of each drink you sell and how much milk each one actually pours.

ounces a day   = drinks sold a day x milk ounces per drink, per milk
gallons a week = ounces a day x 7 / 128
ounces to cover = ounces a day x days until the next delivery
order          = (ounces to cover - ounces on hand) / ounces per pack, rounded up

The same sum with one line from the milk post in it, so you can check the calculator against your own arithmetic:

iced matcha latte   47 sold x 12 oz       = 564 oz
gallons             564 / 128             = 4.4 gallons

one day to cover    564 x 1               = 564 oz
32 oz cartons       564 / 32 = 17.6       = 18 cartons

Do it once per milk, not once for milk. Whole, oat and cream ride different trucks on different cutoffs, so one gallons figure blurs three orders into one guess.

A gallon is 128 fluid ounces, so a gallon jug is 128 and a quart or a 32 ounce carton is 32. If your oat comes in another size, change the pack on that line and the order follows.

A swap moves milk from one line to another without adding any. A latte that goes out with oat a fifth of the time puts a fifth of its ounces on the oat order and the rest on the whole.

Round up once, at the end, after taking off what is on the shelf. You can't order two thirds of a carton, and rounding each drink before adding them orders milk you don't need.

A worked example from the milk post

The calculator opens on an example menu, so it gives an answer before you type anything. The pours are the six in the milk post's table: a cortado takes 2 ounces, a cappuccino 4, a 12 ounce hot latte 6, a 16 ounce iced latte 10, an iced chai 10 and an iced matcha latte 12. The drinks sold a day are an example too, split the way Parly's demo cafe sells these six drinks.

Take one line from the post. Forty-seven iced matcha lattes at 12 ounces is 564 ounces of oat milk, about 4.4 gallons, from one drink on one morning. In 32 ounce cartons that is 18 for the day once you round up.

Now swap in your own menu. Pull last week's sales by drink from Square, divide by the days you were open, and type the counts in. Measure each pour once with a measuring cup instead of guessing. Set the days until your next delivery, count what is on the shelf, and read the order.

One thing the arithmetic can't see is the swap. Two cafes selling the same 300 drinks can order completely different milk because one defaults to oat and the other to whole. Put the share of each drink that goes out with another milk in its swap line, and those ounces move onto that milk's order. The example does this for lattes, using the oat share Parly's demo cafe sells.

The full method, and why a gallons-per-week average can't stand in for yours, is in how much milk a coffee shop uses per week.

Frequently asked questions about a cafe's milk order

How much milk does a coffee shop use per week?

One published cafe guide puts a shop selling 200 to 300 cups a day at 38 to 57 gallons of milk a week (Sourced: Start Right Retail, accessed July 2026). Yours depends on which drinks you sell, how much each pours, and how many go out iced. Type your milk drinks into the calculator and it gives you your own number, split by milk.

How much milk goes in a latte?

It depends on the cup. In the milk post's example pours, a 12 ounce hot latte takes about 6 ounces of milk and a 16 ounce iced latte about 10. A cortado takes 2 and a 16 ounce iced matcha latte 12. Pour your own into a measuring cup once and write it down.

How do I split the order between whole milk and oat milk?

Your house default and your swap rate decide it. At Le Gaz, over one seven-day window, 50 percent of 1,670 milk drinks were whole milk swaps on a menu where oat is the default. Read the milk modifier on each ticket, then put each drink's swap share in the calculator so its ounces land on the right milk.

How often should a cafe order milk?

Against each supplier's cutoff, not once a week. Dairy usually rides a truck on a next-day cutoff, so each order only covers the days until the next delivery. Put that number in days until the next delivery, and remember the days the truck does not run. If Saturday sells a different mix than Tuesday, turn on the weekend split and give each drink a weekday and a weekend count.

Why is the example menu above the 38 to 57 gallon range?

Every row on the example is a milk drink, and half of them are 16 ounce iced drinks that pour 10 or 12 ounces. The published range is an average for whole shops of 200 to 300 cups a day, and not every cup is a milk drink. That gap is the reason to work out your own number instead of borrowing an average.