The situation seems to be that they thought the total order over time would be 6,000 "units" (and I've always seen "unit" as equivalent to "retail item," not ca

The situation seems to be that they thought the total order over time would be 6,000 "units" (and I've always seen "unit" as equivalent to "retail item," not case or casepack), not that the orders weren't being submitted per-case. In other words, the issue isn't that they were selling entire cases at a wholesale unit price; the contract probably stated something like pricing of "$x/case, 6 units per case," but the issue was that a noncontractual, oral term of "6,000 cases" was conveyed as "6,000 units," leading the company to assume they had the cashflow and resources to handle that scale of order. It wasn't, and they didn't. As a result, they went negative free cashflow because they weren't prepared for the capital outlay, payment terms were subject to the entire order being fulfilled (which was 6x larger than they expected), and then the order was entirely cancelled with no recourse or break fee. So it seems to basically have been a perfect storm of a very small, retail roaster with very limited wholesale experience signing a contract for a single deal that was far larger than they could financially handle, having to take on a bunch of high-interest and friends-and-family debt to cover the costs of fulfilling the contract, then the contract allowing a unilateral out on the part of the resale broker with no recourse for the roasters. It's not the first time I've seen a company get stranded at the growth inflection point with insufficient cash or credit to get over the hump. Looks like they might survive this learning experience, and hopefully will be a lot more cautious about growth opportunities in the future. And it might serve as a cautionary tale for some folks on this site who could find themselves in a similar situation, taking on more growth than their business can operationally or financially support.