Retail Strategies & Supplier Insights

Here’s the curveball: post-audit deductions can arrive months—even two years—after the sale. If your documentation is messy, those “closed” periods reopen with painful surprises.

Retail deductions aren’t a one-time clean-up—they’re a tax on sloppy hand-offs. A strong food broker earns their keep long before the first PO by preventing the errors that become chargebacks: mis-keyed price files, barcode hiccups, promo mismatches, late/short deliveries, and compliance misses.

What is Product Photography? (Simple Definition) Product photography is the disciplined process of planning, lighting, styling, and capturing images of a product, allowing customers to evaluate it online or in print.

“Retail deductions” are amounts a retailer withholds from your invoice—usually for shortages, compliance issues, pricing discrepancies,...

A food broker is a contract sales representative who connects food and beverage manufacturers with retail buyers—think grocery chains, club stores, mass, and specialty. They don’t buy or own your product; they sell it, manage the relationship, and help move it through existing retail channels.

Let’s be real: retail deduction software is essential. But software surfaces claims; experts recover dollars. Winners use both.

Imagine this: you ship a $250,000 order of frozen entrees to a major retailer. A few weeks later, the payment arrives—short by $15,000. The code on the statement says “shortage,” but your warehouse confirms the pallets were shipped in full.

Every supplier has been there: a deduction shows up, and everyone points fingers—sales blames ops, ops blames finance. Meanwhile, the money’s gone.

Just when you think you’ve nailed a retailer’s compliance playbook, the rules change. Maybe the OTIF (On Time, In Full) window gets...

Late trucks. Wrong pallet configs. Missing paperwork. Each slip turns into a deduction. And the math adds up fast. A $300 error on a truckload? Multiply that by 200 loads a year, and you’ve lost $60K before you know it.

Retailers are relentless about deadlines—especially when it comes to deduction disputes. Many give you just 90 days from the deduction date to submit your case. Miss that window, and the money is gone forever.

In retail, you can have the perfect product, perfect price, and perfect pitch—and still lose the sale because you pitched at the wrong...

Walk into a buyer meeting and you’ll hear the usual questions: What’s your case cost? Can you meet our OTIF standards? How do you support...

Discover the latest Grocery Shopping Statistics and Insights. Learn how digital trends and consumer behaviors are reshaping grocery shopping.

The journey from the kitchen or production floor to mass retail shelves is both challenging and full of opportunity. From the initial spark of product creation to securing prime placement in stores, the path is complex and highly competitive. In this landscape, food brokers play a pivotal role in helping brands break through the noise and achieve retail success.

No one starts a brand because they love compliance. But ignoring it? That’s how you go from “next big thing” to “why aren’t we getting...

You get the email. “Just wanted to let you know I’ve accepted a new role…” And just like that, your champion at retail is gone. Now What?...

What We Learned from This Year’s Retail Heavyweight Showdown Every July, it’s the same showdown with new twists: Amazon Prime Day versus...

You don’t need a crystal ball to understand your retail future—you just need to pay attention to what your data is already telling you....

You thought your buyer loved you. You thought you were locked in for resets and features. Then a new competitor shows up—and just like that, your item disappears from the set.