Samuel AndersonManaging Partner, BevAssets, LLC · Just Pick Up The Phone 📞 | Joy 🦋 | Empowering individuals through meaningful connections, one person at a time.

Make your product available #winning #beverages #volume #reorder #business

15 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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In this advisory segment, the speaker emphasizes that beverage brands must maintain roughly a 95% fill rate to keep premium shelf space with major retailers such as Walmart. He stresses that brands need sufficient capital to keep products stocked when retailers request them, because retailers will not protect shelf space for out‑of‑stock items. The speaker illustrates the stakes with a case study: a brand expanded into BevMo and Total across 38 states, but when the retailer knocked on the door for product, the brand could not supply it, leading to the brand’s collapse. The core message is that inventory availability, backed by adequate financing, is essential for sustaining retail partnerships and avoiding costly loss of shelf space.

Chapters

You have to have a 95% fill rate when these people come knocking on your door. If you don't, they're going to disappear because that shelf space is at premium. That is the biggest thing I see from a production standpoint. If you're going to get in this business, make sure you have the capital to actually have the product available when they come knocking on your door. Because guess what? Walmart is not going to protect your shelf space because if they go out of stock, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars they're losing. And there's 18 brands behind you. Waiting for that shelf space. So I would tell you, careful what you wish for too. In this case, they went into BevMo, they went into Total, they got 38 states. Everybody's like, yay. But when they came knocking on the door, the product wasn't available. And that is what caused the demise of that brand and that company, by the way.