Breakthru Beverage Group is a family-owned beer and liquor wholesale distributor with distribution centers throughout North America. The company stocks beer, wine, liquor, and other beverages for sale to suppliers and restaurants around the country and Canada.
AK Material Handling Systems partnered with Breakthru Beverage, assisting in the redesign of their Minneapolis, MN warehouse.
We provided various custom storage solutions to integrate alongside their existing rack. This project primarily involved selective racking. Additional rack systems included carton flow racking, push-back racking, steel shelving, and keg flow for various keg sizes.
Breakthru Beverage Storage Needs
Breakthru Beverage needed a new efficient warehouse layout to maximize SKU locations in its bustling Minneapolis facility. This warehouse stores a mixture of whole, half, and quarter pallets, various keg sizes, including sixth kegs and quarter kegs, plus hand-stacked cases of beer and liquor.
Carton flow and keg flow helped increase efficiency for the fast-moving SKUs in this warehouse, simplifying hand-picked orders and optimizing warehouse flow. The result is more loaded trucks in less time.
Services Provided
AK is a warehouse layout design company and pallet rack provider. We offer turnkey solutions for warehouses in transition. We help with new storage system purchases, warehouse relocation, pallet rack installation, warehouse design, and more.
We assist businesses in every stage of their warehouse design journey, which is what brought us to the attention of Breakthru Beverage Group. We were equipped to provide new racking, warehouse layout design, and installation all in one.
The Breakthru redesign project commenced in two main phases over six weeks. From March 8th to April 21st of 2023, selective and carton flow beer and wine storage were installed. Additionally, we reconfigured three storage areas: a lock-up cage, craft beer cooler, and keg cooler.
Jerry Fredrickson from our design group provided the Layout CAD drawings for Breakthru Beverage and our installation crew:
It was a great project to work on with the Breakthru Team, especially Travis Cychosz, who was an outstanding Warehouse Manager. He was on top of the entire process of the project, which made the installation feel seamless. We completed the main project areas within the timeline before they went live for their picking operations combining the St. Paul facility and Minneapolis facility product lines.
-Jerry Fredrickson, Systems Design Specialist
Jerry’s layout design work and CAD drawings simplified the details for the overall installation of the various areas while also specifying and securing the storage systems needed to complete the installation on time.
About the Storage Systems
Beer and Wine Storage
The warehouse is split into two selective pallet racking areas, one for beer and one for wine. The beer section is 405 bays – 315 bays of existing selective structural racking and 90 bays of newly purchased used selective teardrop racking, including 21 bays with four levels of carton flow.
The wine area is all newly purchased used selective teardrop racking which is 382 bays with 86 bays of carton flow and 17 bays of hand-stacked locations.
Lock-Up Cage Area
We also created a lock-up cage area for specialty wine and liquor SKUs with 34 bays. Each bay has four levels of hand-stack carton flow.
Craft Beer Cooler
The craft beer cooler was reconfigured with a consolidated design of existing structural selective bays for craft beer pallets. An additional 30 bays was added for incoming wine SKUs that need to be in a cooler on newly purchased selective teardrop racking, each bay having four levels of hand-stack items.
Keg Cooler
The existing keg cooler structural racking was reconfigured to accommodate 18 bays of keg flow with 7 lanes on the floor level for sixth & quarter size kegs. Additional pallet locations were located on the front and back side of the existing structural keg racking. An additional 27 single bays for keg pallet locations were reconfigured to give a much more efficient storage and picking design.
Keg flow rack is an engineered flow storage system designed to safely store cylindrical products like barrel kegs. Keg flow keeps kegs vertical and single file. Operators load kegs from the back of the system and pick from the front of the rack.
Need Warehouse Design?
Does your warehouse facility need a redesign or new pallet racking? We can help! We have years of experience helping customers like Breakthru Beverage transform their storage facilities to increase profits and optimize operating time.
Call 800-722-5908 to contact a design expert, or fill out our online quote form today! We look forward to assisting you in this monumental next step for your business.
Let’s Talk
Ready to get started? Or have questions about any of our products or services? Fill out the form and a representative will contact you promptly.
About AK Material Handling Systems
We deliver value to our customers by providing the absolute best combination of quality products, helpful customer service and competitive pricing. We specialize in warehouse layout & design, pallet rack systems, engineered sales, mezzanines, modular offices and completed turn-key warehouse systems. For more information email us or call (800) 722-5908
Let’s Talk
Ready to get started? Or have questions about any of our products or services? Fill out the form and a representative will contact you promptly.
About AK Material Handling Systems
We deliver value to our customers by providing the absolute best combination of quality products, helpful customer service and competitive pricing. We specialize in warehouse layout & design, pallet rack systems, engineered sales, mezzanines, modular offices and completed turn-key warehouse systems. For more information email us or call (800) 722-5908