Growth Playbooks

The Distribution Playbook: More Markets, More Mindshare

By EveryShelf · November 2026 · 10 minute read

How do distributors actually decide what to sell?

On what moves and what pays. The distributor's business is a margin of roughly 25 to 30% on thousands of SKUs, delivered on a route, and its reps are paid on cases and placements. A rep's day is a route of 15 to 30 stops, most of them existing accounts, with a handful of brands the house is incentivizing that month. A new brand gets sold when it is one of those brands, or when the rep already knows it sells.

Three things move a brand up the rep's list:

1. Evidence it sells. Depletions by account, reorder rates, a core account taking cases weekly. The rep is not going to pitch a brand that has not moved in the accounts they already serve.
2. Money on the table. A placement spiff or a case incentive paid to the distributor's reps for a defined period (legal in most states when it goes to the distributor's people, never to the retailer; check the state). Depletion allowances paid to the distributor on sell through, not on purchase, so the house is rewarded for moving the brand rather than stocking it.
3. Less work for the rep. A named hit list with the decision maker and the best time to call, a build card or shelf talker ready to leave behind, samples in the rep's car, and a brand person who will go on the route with them.

The flywheel Park Street describes is simple: the supplier wins the first accounts, the rep earns commission on them, the wholesaler notices the case volume, and the rep starts protecting the brand from delisting. Nothing in it happens without the supplier doing the first part.

Two warnings. Signing a distributor is a license to be sold, not a sales force; brands that assume otherwise discover six months later that their cases are in the warehouse. And national chain mandates without local execution are worse than no mandate: 6 to 14% of purchased inventory sits forgotten in retail back rooms, and the rep prioritizes new sales over checking yours.

How do you choose the next market?

Score cities, not states, on four things, and open one at a time.

This is the method Campari's former Asia Pacific lead used to rank markets by profit pool, then adjust for complexity, and the one Tequila Fortaleza's Billy Erickson arrived at after an early expansion he calls too fast and unfocused: pick one, model whether it still works if a tariff or a tax changes the shelf price, and set a monthly cash burn you can tolerate before sales arrive (Park Street, Beyond Your Home Market).

Open it the way the home market was opened. A hit list of 100 accounts with core, influence and volume rings; the founder or a market manager on the ground for the first 90 days; features and staff trainings in the first month; the distributor rep on the route every week. A market with a distributor and no field presence is a market with cases in a warehouse.

Hold price. New markets tempt brands into launch discounts that become permanent. Set the structure once, fund programs through incentives and allowances, and keep the FOB firm.

What programming actually moves cases?

Programs that pay the people who sell and that make the brand easy to pour. In rough order of return for a growing brand:

1. The monthly ask. One clear objective per month for the distributor team ("20 new on premise placements of the reposado in these 40 accounts"), with a spiff attached and a scoreboard the reps can see. Vague "support the brand" asks produce nothing.
2. Ride alongs and work withs. A brand person on the route with the rep one day a week in each active market. The rep learns the pitch, the brand learns which accounts are real, and the accounts see the brand has people. This is the single highest return hour a sales leader spends.
3. Staff trainings and tastings. 79% of US bartenders recommend specific drinks every shift and 91% are more likely to recommend a brand they were trained on (CGA by NIQ). Twenty minutes with the shift at a core account beats any table tent.
4. Features and menu builds. A named cocktail on the list is a placement that reorders itself. Bring the build, the cost per pour and the garnish; make the listing easy for the beverage director to say yes to.
5. Depletion allowances and bill backs. Paid on sell through by account, tiered toward the accounts and SKUs the brand cares about, never flat across the house. A $1.75 per case allowance on 320 depleted cases costs $560 and tells the distributor which accounts matter.
6. Retail samplings and displays. Weekend in store tastings near the on premise core, end caps and case stacks in the independent stores that index to the brand's guest. Check they happened: Park Street recommends third party shelf verification for any chain commitment.

What does not work: trade spend with no account level target, launch pricing that never ends, and programs the brand cannot measure. Every program should map to a list of accounts and a number the brand will check in 30 days.

When should you use brokers, agents and independent reps?

When the brand needs feet on the street in a market before it can afford an employee there. There are roughly 127,000 independent brokers and agents working in the US beverage industry, and most growing brands use them for at least one market.

How they are paid. Park Street's field guide recommends a retainer or hybrid model for foundation stage brands, charged per market, moving to straight commission once the brand has velocity and awareness. An unfunded retainer "guarantees failure": the agent needs samples, point of sale, a sampling budget and travel money or nothing happens.

What to check before signing. Which SKUs are in the reps' bags (two competing ultra premium tequilas in one bag is a conflict); how often the agency reports depletions and account feedback and in what form; which KPIs govern the reps; and how territories are drawn, since a dense market like metro New York needs a different structure from Florida or California.

What the brand owes the agent. The same thing it owes a distributor rep: a hit list, a monthly objective, programs, and a shared account record. A broker who logs visits into the brand's system rather than their own notebook is worth more than one who sells a few more cases, because the record is what the brand keeps when the contract ends.

When are chains and groups the right next step?

After the independents, and only with the coverage to execute. Regional restaurant groups, hotel groups and retail chains are where a growing brand's second wave of distribution comes from, and they are won on evidence from the first wave.

On premise groups. A restaurant group's beverage director controls ten to a hundred menus. The pitch is the same build and the same economics as a single account, backed by velocity data from the group's own market. Start with the group's flagship (often already on the influence list), prove it there, then ask for the group.

Retail chains. A chain listing is a mandate for the chain's stores and an obligation for the brand: the distributor has to deliver to every store, the shelf set has to be checked, and the brand has to drive velocity or the listing is cut at the next reset. Scan data (NIQ, Circana) will show the chain exactly what the brand did. Go in only with the field or third party coverage to verify placement and the program budget to support it.

Control states. Seventeen US jurisdictions control wholesale or retail of spirits. A listing with the state board is a different sales process (a listing committee, a set review calendar, state run stores) and usually worth pursuing only once the brand has a track record in open states nearby.

Which numbers matter when you are adding distribution?

The common failure is measuring in aggregate. National PODs can rise every month while the home market quietly loses its core accounts, which is the one thing a growing brand cannot afford. Keep the account level view: which accounts, which rep, what was promised, what happened next. That record is also what the next distributor, the next market manager and the next investor will ask to see.