Selling wholesale

Wholesale is the channel that looks like growth and quietly halves your margin. Do the arithmetic before the first order rather than after.

The arithmetic, first

A shop expects roughly half of shelf price. So your wholesale price has to work at that, which means your shelf price is your cost times four rather than times two.

A producer whose price was set at a market, where they keep everything, usually finds that price does not survive the halving. That discovery after accepting an order is the expensive version.

What a buyer needs from you

A current price list with case quantities and minimum order. A scannable barcode for most retailers. Insurance, often naming them. A process filing number if they ask, and grocery buyers do. Consistent supply, which means not running out in October.

Have all of it ready before the conversation. A buyer who has to chase paperwork moves on, and the gap between interest and a first order is where most small producers lose the account.

Getting the first accounts

Independents first: specialty food shops, butchers, farm stores, the places whose owner makes the decision on the spot. They are also the ones who met you at a market.

Walk in with samples, a price list and a case, not a pitch. Ask what else in the category sells for them, and listen, because that tells you where your price and heat level sit in their shop.

Keeping them

Reorder is the whole business. An account that buys once is a sample; an account that reorders monthly is the thing you are building.

Check in without waiting to be called, because a shop will let a line run out before telling you. Ask how it is moving and where on the shelf it sits. And deliver when you said, because reliability is what a buyer is really evaluating in the first year.

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