For small breweries, landing your beer on shelves or in draft lines can feel like reaching the top of a steep, hazardous mountain. Unfortunately, it’s a false summit—the real work comes after your brewery has earned that placement.
Businesses sometimes overlook sales velocity in favor of other metrics, such as points of distribution or sales growth. But it’s a critical data point for telling a brewery’s story, internally and externally, because it can help make a case for consumer demand—even when a brand is relatively small. It can also be a wise move, financially: At a time when every brewery is trying to reduce costs and maximize efficiencies, generating repeat sales from one placement is more efficient than seeking out additional points of distribution.
However, it’s a mistake to leave that job entirely up to wholesalers and retailers. Even without dedicated sales reps or large marketing budgets, breweries can do plenty of things to ensure pull-through, and to avoid becoming the slowest-moving SKU on the chopping block come spring resets.