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How a Food Broker Becomes Your Compliance Bodyguard

Body guard

You hire a food broker to open doors. Great. But the best brokers do something more valuable: they keep those doors from slamming shut because of compliance misses that trigger deductions, OTIF penalties, or delist risk.


Why this matters

Retailers don’t just buy on taste and price. They buy on confidence—confidence you’ll hit delivery windows, label correctly, and conform to routing guides. Miss those, and you pay. Walmart’s OTIF fines can hit 3% of the cost of goods for misses, and SQEP defects stack fast when packaging/labeling falls short. 


What elite food brokers actually do

  • Translate retailer rules into checklists. They turn dense guides (SQEP, OTIF, ASN/EDI) into a “do this, then that” plan before the first shipment. 

  • Pressure-test operations. Pallet patterns, barcode placement, NMFC codes—verified against retailer playbooks, not assumptions. 

  • Trend watch. They spot recurring shortage codes and compliance defects across multiple clients and flag root causes early.

  • Dispute smarter. They prioritize winnable, high-value claims and assemble airtight packets (BOLs, case counts, ASN, carrier scans).

  • Coach for resets. Before promo spikes or planogram resets, they run a pre-mortem on likely failure points.


A fictional (but familiar) scenario

A refrigerated dip brand lands a regional test—first order ships. Labels are readable, but the pallet height exceeds the spec by an inch. DC scanners balk, unload times spike, and the shipment flags non-compliant. Result: SQEP defects + OTIF penalty + shortage deduction. A seasoned broker would’ve caught the pallet pattern in the pre-ship review—and saved five figures. (Fictional example.)


The KPIs that prove it’s working

  • OTIF % and OTIF-related fees per 1,000 cases 

  • SQEP defect rate, top-3 defect types, and trend lines by DC

  • Deduction recovery rate, cycle time to dispute, win rate, and cash recovered

  • Chargeback $ per PO (before vs. after broker engagement)


Bottom line

Great brokers don’t just sell; they safeguard the sell-through. In an environment where small misses create big deductions, a broker who speaks “retailer compliance” is your first line of defense.


If you’re scaling into national accounts and want a broker who protects your margin—not just your meetings—let’s talk. Woodridge Retail Group partners with HRG to blend sell-in expertise with deduction prevention and recovery.

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