Notes for owners · Industry playbooks
Selling beverages online: bottles, cases and packaging that stop breakage returns
How a beverage brand selling online picks packaging and case size, tests a packed case before it ships, and writes a damage rule so a broken bottle ends in a replacement, not a refund war.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
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A beverage brand selling online loses money on breakage in three places: the inner packing, the case size, and the missing damage rule. Bottles touching in a single-wall box crack in the courier hub. A heavy case of twelve gets dropped off the rider's bike. And a buyer who opens a soaked box with no instructions asks for a full refund, then writes a review. So fix the packing and the case size, drop-test the case, and write the rule before the first complaint.
Where bottles actually break
Breakage tends to happen in the same few places, and each one has its own fix.
| What goes wrong | Where it happens | What stops it |
|---|---|---|
| Bottles crack against each other | Sorting hubs, where parcels slide and stack | A partition or moulded pulp shipper so no two bottles touch |
| One broken bottle soaks the whole case | Anywhere after the first break | A sealed polybag around each bottle, or around each row |
| The case is crushed from above | Stacked under heavier parcels in a van | A double-wall box, filled to the top with no gap to collapse |
| Caps leak or pop | Hot vans, especially for live or fizzy drinks | A shrink band or induction seal, and no dispatch into a heatwave |
| Labels scuffed, bottles arrive grubby | Rubbing inside a loose box | Snug inner packing and a sleeve for gift packs |
| The case is dropped | The last-mile rider, carrying it on the bike | A case light enough to carry in one hand, with a handle cut |
Live drinks such as kombucha keep working in a hot van, and pressure builds behind the cap. Dispatch them early in the week, and say on the page that the bottle goes into the fridge on arrival.
Choose the case size for the courier, not the shelf
A case of twenty-four suits a shop. Online, it is heavy, awkward and expensive to replace when one corner gets crushed. For courier delivery, the right case is the largest one that still stays light enough for one hand and sits inside the weight slab your courier charges by. For most glass ranges that is a six or a twelve.
Keep the big cases for buyers your own van reaches: offices, cafes and housing societies close to you.
Price the case so it carries the cost of breakage. Once the breakage log described below shows how many cases break, add that share of replacement cost to the price of every case. Paying for broken bottles out of the marketing budget is pretending it does not happen.
Test the packed case before a buyer does
Packing looks safe on the table. It is the drop that tells you. Pack a full case exactly as you will ship it and drop it from waist height onto concrete. Drop it once on each flat side, once on an edge and once on a corner. Open it. If a bottle has cracked, a cap has moved or the box has split, change one thing and repeat.
Then send three test cases by your courier to the farthest pincode you plan to serve, ideally to a friend who will open them on video. A courier journey does things a drop cannot.
Keep a simple breakage log from the first order: order number, pincode, courier, case size, packing version, what broke and where. Within a few dozen orders you will see whether one courier, one route or one box is the problem.
Write the damage rule before you need it
A buyer who opens a case of broken glass is angry for a short while. What you do in that while decides whether the buyer reorders. Put the rule on the product page and on a card inside the case:
- Tell us on the day of delivery if anything is broken or leaking. One picture of the open case, with the shipping label in view, is all we need.
- The broken bottles come again in the next dispatch, free, or we refund those bottles. You choose.
- If more than half the case is damaged, the whole case is replaced.
- Do not send the glass back. Wrap it well before it goes out with the rubbish.
- The courier claim is ours to make, never yours.
Replacing bottles, not refunding the whole order, keeps the buyer and keeps the cost in proportion. The label in the picture does a second job. It tells you the courier and the route, which goes straight into the breakage log.
For example: a craft soda maker in Gorakhpur
For example, imagine a small craft soda maker in Gorakhpur selling 330 ml glass bottles of jeera and kala khatta soda in cases of twelve. It packs them in single-wall boxes with bubble wrap. The bottles touch. In the first hot weeks, photographs of soaked boxes arrive from Lucknow and Delhi, the brand refunds whole orders, and a few buyers post the pictures in their reviews.
Courier orders move to cases of six, in double-wall boxes with moulded pulp shippers and a polybag around each bottle. Cases of twelve and twenty-four stay on the brand's own van, for offices and cafes in Gorakhpur. New box suppliers get the drop test first. The damage rule goes on a card in every case, and the measured breakage cost goes into the case price. In this illustration, breakage on courier cases falls from about 14 in 100 to 4 in 100. At roughly ₹300 of product and freight per replacement, the rest still costs ₹1,200 per 100 cases, which the brand adds to the case price instead of absorbing. Some of the new reviews still mention a leaking cap, but far fewer show glass.
What the page should say
Show the case as it arrives, open, with the partitions visible, so the buyer sees the care before paying. State the case size, the bottle size and the material. Put the damage rule one tap away. Labelling and food rules for drinks differ by state and body and change. Check what your label and listing must carry with your own adviser or the regulator.
This post covers non-alcoholic drinks only; alcohol sits under state excise law and is another subject.
Drop one packed case on its corner
Pack one case tonight and drop it on the corner. If anything moves, you have found your first fix. Beverage brands are one of the trades on our e-commerce sales and marketing page. If you want to talk through the pricing and packaging of the case, the listings and the damage rule, tell us what you need.
