How does the supply chain to consumer work?

[skyhrg]

So I make beer. Beer goes into warehouse A. Does that mean beer can be accessed from any warehouse?

Then, how does the consumer get beer from the market? Is there another transport from the warehouse to the market?

I'm just trying to figure these things out so that I can optimize the chain...

What do you guys think?

[Chaosium]

Your population doesn't use/need any structure in order to get goods, as soon as they are stored in any warehouse, they become available for consumption on the entire island

Same goes for production chains. You can have hops delivered in warehouse A, malt in warehouse B and beer in warehouse C in different corners of the island, the breweries can pick up all they need from warehouse C, although it will involve some extra loading times

[skyhrg]

Ok, so the population don't physically walk over to the marketplace. It's only the distance between marketplace and house that causes their needs to be fulfilled, huh.

[Tankfriend]

The marketplace is entirely irrelevant for the actual distribution of goods to your population.
Later population levels don't even need access to a marketplace, anymore, though they will require access to other service buildings, instead.

Residences are supplied with goods if they can trace *any* road connection to your trade post. The length of the road or the physical distance to the trade post don't matter.

[arjensmit79]

There is an invisible metro system connecting all your warehouses on the island.

Building chains like Sheepfarm -> Clothier -> Warehouse instead of Sheepfarm -> Warehouse and Clothier -> Warehouse is only to reduce the load on the warehouses and thus reduce the amount of warehouses needed. Optimizng the efficiency of warehouse use is what optimization in early game is all about. To do this, you may want to counterintuitively place your production buildings further away from them so that they bring fewer larger loads instead of many small loads. Having the production buildings right next to them but at equal distance works too, it will balance itself over time. Having production buildings at different distances is where it goes wrong and the nearby buildings will clog the warehouse blocking the more remote buildings.

Later on, you will get the Union building that you can equip with bonusses for all of some building in range and thats when you may want to build sheepfarm -> Warehouse and Clothier -> Warehouse in order to fit as many of the same buildings within the range of 1 union building as you can.