Getting into one grocery store can make your product available to hundreds of ot
By Elan Halpern · October 14, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Getting into one grocery store can make your product available to hundreds of others.
That’s something we’re starting to see with Sourmilk as we work with larger distribution partners.
Here’s how grocery distribution actually works:
1. A brand secures an “anchor account.” This is a retailer with enough volume to justify a distributor stocking your product in a particular regional warehouse, called a distribution center or DC.
2. That retailer helps “open the DC.” Once there’s enough committed demand, you ship inventory to the warehouse so the distributor can fulfill those orders.
3. Now other stores can order too. Your product is sitting alongside thousands of others in a warehouse that already supplies stores across the region. Those stores can discover and order it through the distributor they already use.
This is how brands reach new regions without having to build their own delivery network.
We still have to give buyers a reason to put us on the shelf, but now “can you deliver here?” is a question we can say yes to a lot more often.