Packaged drinks reach shops through bottling lines, depots and distributors. Line operators, route sales teams and brand managers all work to a summer calendar and tight cold chain rules.
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Share your requirementsAn FMCG beverage brand sells packaged drinks such as juices, soft drinks, water, energy drinks, dairy beverages or ready-to-drink tea and coffee. Some brands own plants, while others use co-packers and focus on brand and sales. Where there is a plant, the line includes syrup room, blending, bottling or canning, capping, labelling, packing and palletising, with water treatment, utilities and laboratory teams in support. Beyond the gate, depots, distributors, van sales, merchandisers and brand teams push stock into shops, coolers and events. Demand peaks in summer, festivals and sporting events, so staffing, vans and coolers must scale quickly. Quality failures and stockouts are visible on the shelf. Related reading: HR for manufacturing.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in FMCG beverage brands. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Lines run extra shifts, vans multiply and temporary workers join within days, and errors in fill level and coding rise.
Flavour and pack changes require cleaning and settings, and rushed changeovers are where contamination and label mistakes occur.
A small lapse in sanitation or dosing affects thousands of bottles, yet these roles carry little status.
Salesmen are measured on cases and cooler placements, and returns, damages and unpaid shop credit grow quietly.
Salespeople and drivers employed by distributors represent the brand, but have different pay, training and conduct rules.
Merchandisers lift, place and clean coolers across many shops a day, with no clear records of targets or rest.
A campaign built by marketing may not suit the route constraints, and the field blames head office.
Early dispatch and late return mean fatigue and risky driving, and no one watches the hours.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Performance Management; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a FMCG beverage brands business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A calendar of line shifts, van counts and temporary hands, with a short induction on hygiene and fill checks.
A calendar of line shifts, van counts and temporary hands, with a short induction on hygiene and fill checks. See recruitment process consulting.
A card per changeover with cleaning, setting, coding and first-pack checks, signed by a named lead.
A card per changeover with cleaning, setting, coding and first-pack checks, signed by a named lead. The learning and development process can train operators on it.
A sign-off programme and recognition for syrup room and water treatment staff, with a cover person on every shift.
A sign-off programme and recognition for syrup room and water treatment staff, with a cover person on every shift.
Goals that include returns, damages, credit and cooler health along with volume.
Goals that include returns, damages, credit and cooler health along with volume. See performance management.
A common induction pack and a half-day brand training for distributor sales and delivery staff, reviewed yearly.
A common induction pack and a half-day brand training for distributor sales and delivery staff, reviewed yearly.
A record of start and end times for van drivers with a rest rule and a route plan that makes it possible.
A record of start and end times for van drivers with a rest rule and a route plan that makes it possible.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Peak-season hiring plans for lines, vans and route teams.
Sign-off training for changeovers, syrup room and water treatment roles.
Balanced measures for route sales and depot staff.
Rosters and rest records for peak shifts and long driving days.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator often struggles as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
7 min readRead article
How a D2C founder can decide which digital marketing work to hire for, which to buy from an agency, and which to split, with a worksheet and a five step plan.
6 min readRead article
A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
7 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Plan numbers months ahead, book returning workers first, run a short induction and use lead hands. Keep sanitation and fill checks non-negotiable.
Use a card with a first-pack sign-off, train every operator and have a named lead sign each changeover.
On volume plus returns, damages, credit and cooler health, so that pushing stock does not look like success.
Yes, through shared induction and product training. Confirm with a qualified professional where employer responsibility lies.
Record hours, set a rest rule and plan routes that fit it. Review any incident for hours worked.
We would ask how summer hands are inducted, how changeovers are signed and how route targets are set. A good opening job is a peak-season staffing and induction plan. Scope and fee are agreed in writing.
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