The CPG Retail Execution Playbook: Why Getting on Shelf Is the Easy Part

It was Nicky who first said it to me, and I will never forget it.

We had just finished a brutal stretch of selling into new accounts. New doors everywhere. Velocity starting to climb. I was feeling good about where Suja was headed, and I said something naive like: "I can't wait until we achieve full distribution and have nothing to worry about."

Nicky didn't even pause. She looked at me and said -- aggressively, the way Nicky always did -- "Two years from now, we'll be fighting tooth and nail to maintain our shelf space."

I laughed it off. She was right, of course. She always was.

Here's the thing nobody tells you when you celebrate that first PO from a major retailer. The PO is not the win. The PO is the starting gun.

What happens after you ship is everything.

The Execution Gap Nobody Talks About

Most founders spend all their energy getting into retailers. The pitch deck, the buyer meeting, the slotting negotiation, the forecasts. All of it aimed at one moment: the moment the PO arrives.

And then they exhale. And then they wait for the sell-through to happen.

That's the trap.

Here's what's actually happening in your stores right now. On any given week, roughly 5-8% of retail locations carrying your product have a "void" -- meaning your product is supposed to be there but isn't on the shelf. Could be a backroom fill issue. Could be a receiving problem. Could be a facing that fell behind a competitor. Could be something as mundane as the sticker on your shelf tag peeling off so the stocker doesn't know where it goes.

Five percent sounds small. At 2,000 stores, that's 100 locations per week where your velocity is zero. Where a consumer reaches for your product, doesn't see it, and grabs something else. And where your scan data looks like a problem... even when you don't have one.

Buyers are measured on category performance. They don't have time to root-cause every anomaly. They see weak velocity data and they draw conclusions. You can argue with the conclusions later, or you can have a field execution program that prevents them from forming in the first place.

I'd rather prevent.

Three Levers You Can Pull

Let's talk about how you actually build a field execution program, because there's no one-size-fits-all answer here. Where you are in your growth determines what makes sense.

Option 1: Your broker's field force.

If you're working with a good natural or conventional broker, they may have dedicated field reps who can do store visits. This is your lowest-cost option. It's also your least reliable one. Broker reps cover a lot of brands. Your check for their services doesn't guarantee that your product gets priority attention at store level. You need to know exactly what your broker's field commitment looks like -- how many stores per week, what they're checking, what they report back to you. Vague promises here cost you doors.

Option 2: Third-party merchandising companies.

Companies like Acosta or CROSSMARK offer retail execution services -- trained reps who go into stores and handle resets, voids, and shelf conditions. For brands in the $5M-$25M range, this is often the right answer. You can buy specific services (void checks, facing audits, display builds) without carrying a full-time field payroll. Expect to spend $3,000-$8,000 per month for meaningful coverage in a focused geography.

Option 3: Internal field team.

This is where you end up when you scale. At Suja, we had dedicated account managers like Lauren Soward running Target and Walmart simultaneously, and Jody navigating the complexity of Kroger and Publix. These weren't people who just handled buyer relationships -- they were accountable for what happened at the store level in their accounts. At 30,000+ retail locations, you need people who own execution the way a field general owns terrain.

The key thing to understand: these three options aren't mutually exclusive. You might use broker field force in Year 1, add a third-party merchandising layer as you push into conventional in Year 2, and bring execution in-house on your top accounts in Year 3. The model evolves with the business.

What You're Actually Measuring

A field execution program without metrics is just expensive tourism. Here's what matters.

Void rate. What percentage of your locations have a shelf tag but no product? Your target should be under 3%. Above 5% is a five-alarm problem. Above 10% means you have a supply chain or receiving issue that will show up in your velocity data before it shows up anywhere else.

Facing compliance. Your planogram says three facings. The store has one. That cuts your shelf presence by two-thirds and makes your product nearly invisible to a shopper in motion. Track this by account and by SKU. It tells you which locations need more attention and which buyers might be quietly deprioritizing you.

Shelf position. Eye level is buy level. That's not a saying, that's science. Are you where the planogram says you should be? Or have you drifted to the bottom? Competitive brands routinely try to shift their position at the expense of yours. It's not always malicious -- sometimes it's just the stocker doing what's easiest. A field rep who catches it and fixes it earns their cost back many times over.

Out-of-stocks by day of week. This one surprises founders. A lot of voids happen Tuesday through Thursday, after the weekend sell-through and before the Thursday-Friday delivery reset. If your stores are consistently going OOS on Wednesdays, that's an ordering frequency problem you can fix by working with the store's category manager.

The Mystery Shopping Habit

Here's something I recommend to every founder I work with, regardless of how big your program is.

Go visit your own stores. Personally. Don't announce it.

Walk in as a consumer. Find your product on shelf. See how it looks. Check the competition. Read the shelf tag. Look at the facing. Notice the condition. See if the product near the front of the facing looks like it's been sitting there too long.

The things you notice in 15 minutes as a stranger in your own store would take weeks to surface through reports. And the discipline of doing it regularly -- I'd say once a month in your top 10 accounts -- keeps you connected to what's actually happening at the shelf in a way that no dashboard can replicate.

"The truth of the business is at the shelf." I mean that literally.

Don't Confuse Distribution Gains With Velocity Gains

This is one of the most common mistakes I see in emerging CPG brands, and it's a costly one.

When you add 500 new stores, your total revenue goes up. It looks like growth. But if the velocity at those 500 new stores is weaker than your existing base, you've diluted your average. Your top accounts now look worse in comparison. And when a buyer pulls your scan data, they see a trend that concerns them -- even if your best stores are growing.

"Don't confuse distribution gains with velocity gains." These are two completely different things.

The velocity benchmarks are unforgiving:

80%+ of category median: You're winning. You can expand off-cycle and ask for more.
60-80% of median: Holding steady. You'll make the next reset if nothing changes.
50% of median: You need a plan. The next reset is a question mark.
30-50% of median: You need a strong story and data to back it up, or you're on the cut list.
Below 20% of median: Something is seriously wrong.

A field execution program that catches voids, improves facing compliance, and keeps your product merchandised properly can move you from the 50% band to the 70% band. That's the difference between a brand that makes the next reset and one that doesn't.

Tying It Back to Your Buyer Relationship

The most underrated benefit of a good field execution program isn't what it does for your velocity. It's what it does for your relationship with the buyer.

When you show up to a line review with your own void rate data, your own facing compliance numbers, your own corrective actions by store -- you're communicating something important. You're saying: I own this shelf. I'm not waiting for you to tell me there's a problem. I'm already solving it.

That's rare. Most brands show up with marketing decks and velocity charts and ask for more space. The brands that show up having already fixed the problems -- that's the ones buyers trust with more doors.

Jason Polinsky, who ran category management at Suja and eventually reported directly to me, used to say that the data conversation with buyers only works if you can also demonstrate that your on-shelf execution is clean. Because if it's not clean, the data doesn't mean anything. You're just debating scan data with a retailer while your product is sitting in the backroom of 8% of your locations.

Get the shelf right. Then have the conversation.

The Simple Truth

Getting on shelf takes a great product, a compelling story, and a buyer who believes in you. All of that is hard, and I don't want to minimize it.

But staying on shelf? That's an execution problem. It's less glamorous than the pitch meeting. It doesn't show up in the fundraising deck. No investor has ever asked me how my void rate was running.

And it is quietly one of the highest-leverage things a CPG founder can do to protect every dollar of distribution you've worked this hard to earn.

Build the execution program before you think you need it. Because by the time you think you need it, you've already lost velocity you can't get back.

Dream boldly. Plan soberly. And then go check your shelves.

If you want to go deeper on the operational side of building a retail-ready CPG brand, check out the MBA for CPG program -- it's the curriculum I wish I had at Suja. And if you're ready to put this into practice with real accountability and a cohort of founders who've been through it, the 90-Day Breakthrough is where that work happens.