How to get your product into stores

Start with independents, not chains

An independent store has one person who decides what goes on the shelf, and that person can say yes this week. There is no category review, no range reset to wait for and no listing fee. A chain has a buyer who looks after hundreds of products, reviews the range once or twice a year and wants sales data before a meeting.

So the order matters. Independents give you the thing every bigger buyer asks for: proof that people buy your product again. A list of stores that keep reordering is what gets a category manager to take your call. We cover the long road to the chains in why supermarkets start with independents and, for the American natural channel, in getting into Whole Foods.

Franchised and owner-operated stores sit in between. A Four Square, a New World or many IGA stores are run by an owner who can often take a local product for their own shelves. Treat them as independents.

Pick one city and one store type

The second mistake is going wide. A national list of every store that might take you brings a thin spread of replies you cannot deliver to. Pick one city and one store type and do it properly before you widen it. Stores in one area talk to each other, your delivery costs stay sensible, and you can visit the ones that say yes.

Choose the store type by where a shopper already expects to find a product like yours. Each guide below covers what that owner buys, who decides and how to pitch them.

• Cafés. The quickest yes for drinks, snacks and baking. Small orders, fast decisions, very little fridge space.
• Restaurants. For ingredients, sauces and the drinks list. The chef or owner decides, and consistency matters more than the story.
• Bars. For spirits, RTDs, mixers and non-alcoholic drinks. The bar manager decides, and the staff have to like it.
• Hotels. Several outlets under one roof, and a food and beverage manager who buys for all of them. Slower, and worth it.
• Grocery stores. Independent grocers and owner-run supermarkets. Barcodes, shelf life and margin matter most here.
• Delis and specialty food stores. Owners who curate a range and buy on taste and provenance.
• Liquor stores and bottle shops. For beer, wine, spirits and RTDs, with rules that change by country.
• Boutiques and gift shops. For giftable food, homewares and beauty, bought a season ahead.
• Health food stores. For functional and free-from products, with buyers who read every label.

Stockists you would not think of

The best store type is sometimes one you have never pitched. Gyms, pilates and yoga studios have become strong stockists for functional drinks and protein snacks. Some brands have found buyers in retirement-village cafés, karaoke bars and event venues. If your customers spend time somewhere and that place sells things, it is a store.

Test these the same way: one city, one type, enough stores to judge the result. Fit matters more than the size of the list. A vegan shop sent a product with dairy in it, or a cocktail brand pitching stores that only sell wine, wastes a good first impression.

Know your numbers before you write

The first thing a store owner works out is whether they make money on you. Before you email anyone, know your wholesale price per unit and per case, the recommended retail price, and the margin the store keeps. Many independents look for around 30% or more, and specialty stores often want more than that. The wholesale price calculator does the sums both ways.

Then know the practical answers: case size, minimum order, shelf life, how you deliver and how long it takes, and whether they order from you or through a distributor. A buyer who has to ask three questions before they can say yes often never asks them. The full checklist is in what a buyer needs before they say yes.

Reach the person who decides

A hello@ inbox is read by whoever has a minute, which is rarely the person who chooses stock. In a small store that person is the owner. In a bigger venue or a group it is the buyer, the food and beverage manager, the bar manager or the general manager. Shared inboxes such as accounts@ are a dead end, because nobody there decides what goes on the shelf.

Walking in still works for stores you can reach in person. Go outside the rush, ask for the owner by name and leave something to taste. For the stores you cannot visit, email is the practical way to reach a lot of owners in a week. When we find stores for a brand, we look up one decision-maker per store and skip the shared inboxes.

Write a first email a busy owner can answer

The emails that get answered are short, specific and easy to reply to. Say what you make, why it fits that store, and one step they can take from their inbox. Name something real about the place, like the drinks they carry or the street they are on, so it is obvious you wrote to them and not to five hundred stores at once.

• Keep it short. It should read on a phone between customers.
• Plain text, no attachments. A price list or deck in a first email pushes it towards junk. Send it when they reply.
• Ask for one easy thing. “Reply and I will send a few to try” beats “give us a call”. Shop staff will not phone a stranger mid-shift.
• Send from a separate domain. Never send cold email from the address you use for invoices and your distributor. We buy a separate sending domain that looks like yours and redirects to your site, so your own domain is never at risk.

Follow up, and stop when they answer

One email is not a campaign. Owners read the first one, mean to get back to you and forget. Most replies come on the second or third email. A short sequence of about four emails, a few days apart, keeps you polite and still seen.

The sequence should stop the moment a store replies, so nobody who has answered gets another pitch. That is how our follow-ups work.

Samples: only to the stores that ask

A sample request is the real yes in this trade, but it is not an order. Offer samples, and send them only to stores that ask. It saves stock, and each sample lands with someone who is expecting it.

1. 1Ask the format and the address togetherBottles, cans or a mix? Which address? One message, so the owner answers once.
2. 2Agree a check-in dayAbout a week after it arrives. Put it in your calendar and theirs.
3. 3Keep the first order smallOne case, one or two lines. A store that sells through a small order reorders. One stuck with a big order does not.
4. 4Never promise a visit you will not makeIf you are two cities away, say so, and offer a call or a tasting pack for the staff instead.

Alcohol has its own rules

In many places you cannot post free alcohol to a store, and in most American states it has to reach shops and bars through a licensed distributor. The offer becomes a tasting, brought by you or your rep: “happy to bring a bottle in for the team”. The bars and liquor stores guides cover what changes.

After the yes: first order, then reorders

The AI does not close the sale for you. When a store replies, the follow-ups stop, the reply comes to your inbox and you take it from there: the price list, the samples, the first order. Answer within a day. A store that asked for samples on Monday has moved on by Friday.

Getting on the shelf is the start. The first two weeks decide whether a store reorders. Staff who have tasted your product recommend it, and staff who see it turned down a few times stop mentioning it. Check in after the first delivery, ask what sold and offer a tasting if it is slow. The reorder is what you can show the next buyer.

Flow tracks each store from reply to sample, first order and reorder, and tells you who is due a check-in. When orders grow past what you can deliver yourself, read our guide to CPG distribution: when to bring in a distributor, a broker or a wholesaler, and what they will want to see. A store that has reordered twice is a stockist you can name to the next one.

Getting into stores by country

The method is the same everywhere. The chains, the store types and the words buyers use are not, so each country has its own guide.

• New Zealand. Cafés, bottle stores and Foodstuffs owner-operators.
• Australia. Independent grocers, IGA, and the big two later.
• United Kingdom. Farm shops, delis and independent shops.
• United States. Independent grocers, natural food stores and specialty shops.

Where LaunchPal fits

LaunchPal does the part that takes most brands a year. We find the stores that fit your product, find the person who decides, and write and send a personalised sequence to each one. We learn about each store when we find it and use that in the email, because we understand what you make. Sending starts slowly on a new domain and builds over the first weeks, so nothing goes out in a burst.

The Free plan finds and emails 50 stores a month. Paid covers 500 a month.

You do the part only you can do: answer the stores that reply, send the samples and take the order. To see which stores near you would fit before you write a single email, type your website below.