Why should I focus on Velocity for my Food & Beverage Brand?
Velocity: The #1 KPI for Emerging and Early-Stage
When you’re building a food or beverage brand, it’s easy to obsess over the wrong numbers. Impressions, followers, ad click-through rates — they all feel like progress.
But here’s the truth: none of that matters if your product isn’t moving off the shelf.
If you want to know whether you’ve nailed product–market fit — whether you’ve built something people will actually buy again — the single most important metric to watch is velocity.
What Velocity Really Means
Velocity is a simple but powerful metric: Units sold per store per week. (or U/S/W as it is known in the industry)
That’s it. Not total sales (distribution can make those look great even if you’re turning slowly). Not revenue per door. Just:
How many units leave the shelf every week at every location you’re in?
Because if you’re selling 100 cases across 100 stores, that’s a very different story than 100 cases across 10 stores. The second brand is working — the first one just has wide distribution masking slow movement.
Why Velocity Matters So Much
Retail Buyers Care: Velocity is what gets you more shelf space and better placement. Retailers want winners.
Investors Care: Velocity is proof of product–market fit and repeat purchase behavior — it tells them you can scale profitably.
You Should Care: Higher velocity makes your trade spend more efficient. It means you can spend less per unit sold and still grow.
In other words, velocity isn’t just a metric. It’s a feedback loop telling you whether you’ve earned the right to grow.
How to Measure It
For early-stage brands, velocity can be scrappy. You don’t need to wait for Nielsen or IRI data.
Retailer Portals: Most major retailers have dashboards where you can track units sold per week.
Distributor Reports: Ask for depletions by account, then divide by active doors.
Manual Check-Ins: In the early days, yes, sometimes it’s you visiting stores and talking to managers.
Just make sure you normalize it to per store per week so you can compare apples to apples.
How to Improve It
If your velocity isn’t where you want it, here are a few levers that work:
Positioning & Packaging: Make sure your product clearly answers “Why me?” in two seconds on the shelf.
Price & Promotion: Small tweaks in price architecture or well-timed TPRs can unlock turns.
Drive Trial: Sampling, founder demos, and targeted marketing can introduce the product to the right people.
Fix Distribution Gaps: Make sure inventory is actually hitting the shelf — you can’t sell what isn’t stocked.
And sometimes the biggest win comes from looking at how your products are performing in the set overall.
True Story
For one of our clients, we analyzed store audit data and spotted a weak SKU dragging down the entire set. We gave their sales team clear direction: replace that slower-moving item with a product showing stronger velocity trends (which doesn’t have as widespread distribution yet). The result? A projected $500K annual revenue lift — achieved without adding a single new retailer.
That’s the power of focusing on velocity first: you can unlock growth by working smarter with the distribution you already have.
Focus on Velocity First
It’s tempting to chase awareness or start running big campaigns early — but if velocity isn’t there, you’re just spending money to amplify a problem. Get velocity right first. Then, and only then, pour gas on the fire.
Want Help?
At átomos, we help food and beverage brands measure, improve, and scale velocity — without overspending on marketing that doesn’t move the needle.
Book a 20-minute velocity audit and we’ll help you start identifying what’s slowing you down.
