Retail buyers: how to find a store owner's email

Who decides at an independent store

This guide is part of our retail outreach guide for food and beverage brands. At a chain, a category manager in head office chooses the range. At an independent, the decision sits in the building, with one or two people. Email them and you can get a yes this week.

In hospitality, start with the food and beverage manager or the bar manager, then the general manager, then the owner. They know what sells, they do the ordering, and they can say yes to a sample. In a shop such as a grocer, deli or bottle shop, write to the owner or the buyer. A small group of venues may have one person choosing for all of them, so ask before you write to each site.

• Café: the owner, or the manager who does the ordering.
• Bar or restaurant: the bar manager or food and beverage manager, then the general manager.
• Hotel: the food and beverage manager.
• Grocer or deli: the owner, or the buyer for your category.
• Bottle shop: the owner, or the wine, beer or spirits buyer.

Why info@ rarely works

A shared inbox is read by whoever has time: a weekend staff member, the person who books tables, the accounts team. Your email gets forwarded, or not, to someone who did not ask for it. Some shared inboxes go straight to a bookkeeping tool and are read by nobody at all.

A named person who chooses the range reads your email as a decision. That is the difference between a reply and silence. Use the shared address only when there is truly nobody else, and then ask who handles new products.

How to find the address yourself

If you are doing it by hand, work through these in order. Most independent stores leave a trail.

1. 1The store's own websiteThe about, team and contact pages often name the owner or manager. Their address usually follows the pattern of the shop's domain.
2. 2Social profilesOwners of small shops often post as themselves. The bio or a pinned post may name them, and sometimes give an email.
3. 3Professional profilesSearch the store name with owner, manager or buyer to find who holds the job now.
4. 4The business registerCompany registers list directors. For a small shop, the director is usually the owner.
5. 5AskCall outside the busy hours and ask who looks after new products, and the best address to write to. Or ask in person when you are next in.

Groups, franchises and chains

A small hospitality group may run four venues with one person choosing the drinks for all of them. Write to that person once, not to each site. A franchised store often buys for itself, much like an independent, even though the name over the door is shared. A true chain buys in head office, and the store manager cannot add your product however much they like it. Know which one you are writing to before you send.

Once you have the name

Use it. Start with their first name, and write to them as the person who chooses the range, because they are. If you found them through the business register or a professional profile, do not say so in the email. Mention the store, not how you found them.

If the person you found turns out to be the wrong one, they will usually tell you who to write to. That is a useful reply, so thank them and write to the right person the same day.

Check before you send

A guessed address that bounces costs more than one lost email. Bounces count against the domain you send from, and enough of them push your other emails into spam. Check every address before it goes in a campaign, and never email one that fails.

Leave out personal addresses you found somewhere unrelated to the business. A store owner who gets a pitch at a personal address is more likely to complain than reply.

Keep a record of what you found and when. If an owner writes back to say they have sold the shop or moved on, note it, take them off your list and find the new name. A list you keep current is worth far more next season than a bigger one full of people who have left.

How LaunchPal finds the right person

For each store we find, we look for named people on the store's own domain, with their role, and pick the person who decides: the food and beverage or bar manager, then the general manager, then the owner. We skip shared accounts inboxes, no-reply and system addresses. Every address is graded before anything sends, and anything we cannot stand behind is never sent. See finding stores for the full picture.

Store contacts are found fresh for each campaign, or reused from a lookup made in the last 30 days. Your own uploads, your do-not-contact list and your campaigns stay private to your brand.

Once you have the right person, the email has to earn the reply. Our guides to how to write a pitch email and cold email subject lines cover that. To find the stores in the first place, read how to find stockists.