What Retail Buyers Really Look For in a Food or Drink Brand
- Ben Martin
- Mar 5
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 9
Every year thousands of new food and drink products launch in the UK.
Only a small fraction ever make it onto retail shelves, and fewer still stay there.
Buyers receive a huge volume of pitches from brands, sometimes up to a hundred approaches per week depending on the retailer and category. With that level of demand, the question isn't simply is this a good product?
The real question is:
Does this product deserve a place on the shelf?
Because every new listing means something else has to come off.
From conversations with buyers and industry insiders, five factors consistently determine whether a product gets serious consideration from retail buyers of food and drink brands.
1. Margin: Retail is Ultimately a Commercial Decision
Retailers are businesses first and foremost.
Shelf space is limited and every product needs to justify its place by contributing to the store’s profitability.
That means buyers are looking at the full commercial structure behind a product:
Retail margin
Cost price vs retail price positioning
Promotional support
Distribution costs
If a product doesn’t offer an attractive margin or commercial model, it becomes very difficult for a buyer to justify replacing an existing product with it.
Founders often focus heavily on the product itself, but buyers are asking a simpler question:
Will this product make money for the category?
If the answer isn’t clear, the listing becomes much harder to secure.
2. Category Fit: What Does This Replace?
Every new product creates a ripple effect on the shelf.
For a buyer to introduce something new, they usually need to remove something else.
That means founders should be thinking about a crucial question before pitching:
What product would this replace?
From a buyer’s perspective, the replacement needs to make sense commercially.
For example:
Is the product already popular elsewhere?
Will customers recognise the brand?
Does it clearly offer something different?
Will it grow category sales rather than simply steal share?
Sometimes new brands replace underperforming products from large manufacturers.
Within most categories there is a “long tail” of SKUs — products that might be:
Limited editions
Poor sellers
Seasonal items reaching the end of their run
Products approaching discontinuation
These are often the openings where new brands enter.
The challenge is that founders rarely know which products fall into this category — which is why building relationships with buyers and having meaningful conversations about category innovation is so important.
3. Brand Story: Why Should Anyone Care?
Buyers see hundreds of products every year.
The ones that stand out rarely do so purely because of ingredients or formulation. They stand out because the brand itself is compelling.
That story might involve:
Founder story
Provenance or sourcing
Sustainability credentials
Taste or craft
A clear mission or purpose
Strong brand stories make a product easier to sell to shoppers and easier for buyers to justify internally when presenting the listing opportunity to colleagues.
In crowded categories, brand story is often the factor that transforms a product from just another SKU into something buyers believe consumers will care about.
4. Shelf Presence: Does It Stand Out in a Busy Aisle?
No matter how good a product is, it still has to compete visually on the shelf.
Buyers know that shoppers make decisions quickly, often scanning shelves in seconds.
This means packaging needs to do several things at once:
Capture attention
Communicate clearly
Fit within the category
Reflect the brand’s positioning
But shelf presence isn’t just about design.
Buyers also consider whether a product offers something distinct compared with neighbouring products.
That difference might come from:
Health benefit
Convenience
New formats
Ingredient innovation
Sustainability
Products that clearly stand out – either visually or propositionally – are far easier for buyers to justify listing.
5. Brand Momentum: Is There Demand Already?
Buyers are increasingly looking beyond the product itself to assess brand health.
If a brand can demonstrate that people are already interested in it, the risk of listing becomes significantly lower.
Signals buyers often look for include:
Strong social media following
High engagement or trending content
Active email lists
Direct-to-consumer sales performance
Existing retail or hospitality listings
A useful rule of thumb within the industry is that brands with around 50,000 followers across their social platforms often demonstrate enough consumer interest to attract buyer attention.
It’s not the only factor, but it signals that customers may already be looking for the product.
6. Product Innovation: The Fastest Way Onto the Shelf
If you’re entering a category with no brand recognition, innovation becomes critical.
Buyers are constantly looking for new ideas that reflect changing consumer habits.
Over the past few years we’ve seen several innovation waves reshape categories, including:
Functional beverages
High-protein snacks
Plant-based alternatives
Low and no alcohol drinks
Nootropic and wellness products
One of the fastest-growing trends recently has been nootropics; ingredients such as Lion’s Mane mushroom appearing in coffee, protein drinks and wellness products.
These innovations allow brands to create entirely new spaces within existing categories.
From a buyer’s perspective, innovation isn’t just interesting – it can help drive category growth.
And growth is exactly what retailers are looking for.
The Reality of food and drink brands getting listed by retail buyers
Getting a product into retail isn’t just about having something that tastes good.
Buyers are evaluating whether a product:
Makes commercial sense
Fits the category strategy
Stands out on shelf
Shows signs of consumer demand
Offers something genuinely new
When those elements align, the conversation with buyers becomes much easier.
And when they don’t – even great products can struggle to make it onto the shelf.
Comments