By Michael Bortinger, Director of Marketing and Partnerships at Tastewise
Key takeaways:
- In 2026, distribution is just the start. Retail is performance-driven. Brands don’t “win the shelf” in a line review; they earn renewal weekly through velocity, margin contribution, and operational simplicity.
- The old playbook is breaking. Retailers want SKU clarity, fast differentiation, and proof of demand before shelf. Lagging data and promo-dependent movement now looks like risk.
- Shelf staying power comes from systems, not stories. Translate SKUs into buyer metrics, earn price with visible value, renovate hero SKUs first, prove incrementality with a basket/occasion story, and build a delist-defense kit with leading signals and recovery actions.
In 2026, the shelf is not your goal. It’s your starting point.
Most brands still treat distribution like the finish line. Get the line review win, land the placement, celebrate the reset. The problem is when reality hits. Velocity stalls, promos prop up the numbers, and six months later, your item is “under review” again.
That’s the turning point. Getting on the shelf is less than half the battle. Once you get there, you need to stay there.
Why now? Retail has moved into performance. Buyers are under pressure to grow profit per linear foot while both simplifying operations and effectively reducing risk. They are actively working every day to optimize a system that is becoming less and less forgiving.
No matter how good your story is, they need to know that you will improve their system.
Why the old playbook is breaking
The traditional shelf-winning playbook had three pillars: equity, novelty, and trade muscle. It assumed time would smooth out early-week bumps. That assumption is gone.
Retailers are optimizing for performance, not promises. “This will be big” is not a strategy. It’s a hope. In 2026, hope gets delisted.
POS-only thinking is too slow. POS tells you what was scanned. It does not tell you what need-state is forming, what claims are pulling shoppers in, or what new occasion is about to tip from niche to normal. Lagging data is a rearview mirror. The shelf is a windshield problem.
SKU sprawl is losing to SKU clarity. Brands do not win by flooding the set. They win by making every face earn its keep. That means sharper roles, better ladders, and products that are easy to understand quickly.
This hides a greater truth. Your internal alignment is constraining your growth. If it takes months of debate to approve a claim, a pack tweak, or a renovation, you are building a slow company in a fast aisle. By the time you act, the shelf has already moved on.
What retailers prioritize in 2026
Retailers vary, but their expectations are converging. Four priorities show up again and again:
- Proof of demand. You need to prove shoppers are already behaving in ways that will convert into turns. Demand proof is more credible when it shows clear awareness, intent, and context. What are people trying to cook? What benefits are they seeking? What ingredients, claims, cuisines, and formats are rising together?
- Faster velocity. Velocity is the most honest metric in retail. It drives replenishment, reduces backroom headaches, keeps the set clean, and protects profitability. If your product needs constant heroics to move, you’re not a partner, you’re a risk.
- Clear differentiation. “Premium,” “clean,” and “better-for-you” are no longer differentiators. Retailers need to understand, fast, why your SKU exists, who it’s for, and what job it does that the set is not already doing.
- Lower risk. Risk now includes more than supply. It includes operational complexity, a weak margin story, unclear price architecture, promo dependency, and items that cannibalize rather than grow baskets.
Strategies to keep the shelf in 2026
Shelf wins in 2026 are built through systems. Here are the moves that hold up under reset pressure.
1. Translate every SKU into the buyer’s language.
Your internal story is not the buyer’s story. A shelf-ready narrative answers five questions clearly:
- What shopper need-state is growing, and why does the retailer care?
- What will this do to units and velocity in their set?
- What makes it incremental?
- Where does it sit in the good-better-best ladder, and how does it protect margin mix?
- What makes it easy to run in stores?
If you cannot explain your SKU in those terms, you are asking the buyer to take a leap of faith, which they won’t.
2. Earn price instead of taking price.
In the last few years, many brands relied on price actions and assumed loyalty would hold. In 2026, you must earn your price through visible value.
That means packaging that communicates benefits quickly, claims that match real shopper intent, and a ladder that keeps consumers in the category rather than pushing them to trade down or switch out. If your pricing breaks the set’s logic, you become a risk overnight.
3. Renovate hero SKUs before you launch new ones.
The fastest growth often comes from making existing distribution work harder. Renovation is underrated because it feels less exciting internally. Retailers love it because it looks like lower risk.
A strong renovation loop is simple: spot the signal early, validate it quickly, then bring it to shelf with speed. That can mean a claim refresh, a usage-led repositioning, a format tweak, or a pack architecture update that makes the product instantly more relevant to a rising occasion.
This is where the trend-to-campaign pipeline becomes a shelf strategy. You must align product, message, and merchandising around what shoppers are already moving toward.
4. Prove incrementality with a basket story.
Retailers do not pay rent for your brand story. They pay for incremental category growth.
Incrementality comes from roles: trip driver, basket builder, margin protector, or household expander. If you can show that your SKU supports a meal occasion, a snack pattern, or a specific prep behavior, you make your product harder to cut.
The simplest mental model is this: people do not buy cumin; they buy taco night. They do not buy eggs; they buy a high-protein breakfast. Tie your SKU to an occasion that the retailer wants to own, and you stop being “another item.”
5. Build a delist defense kit before you need it.
Most delists are decisions made under time pressure. There’s no room for debate. You have to win right out of the gate.
So, prepare for them like a professional. A delist defense kit includes: leading demand signals, retailer-specific performance context, a switching risk view (where does the shopper go if you disappear), and a concrete recovery plan with timelines. Not vague optimism. Actual actions.
This is also a discipline play. If you track early warning signs and have pre-approved levers, you can respond in weeks instead of quarters. That speed alone can save your shelf.
What “winning the shelf” really means in 2026
Winning in 2026 is not getting a yes in a line review. It’s earning renewal every week.
The brands that pull ahead will treat insight-led strategy as table stakes. Not because it sounds smart, but because it produces conviction to act.
If you want a single litmus test: How often do you have to convince internally before you can convince a buyer? In 2026, the companies that win shelf are the ones that built faster concept validation loops and clearer decision systems.
Getting on the shelf opens the door. Staying there is proof you belong.
Michael Bortinger is the Director of Marketing and Partnerships at Tastewise, the leading food & beverage intelligence platform transforming trend data into GenAI-powered marketing and sales execution. At Tastewise, he leads global marketing and strategic partnerships, bringing food intelligence to industry leaders including Kraft Heinz, Mars, and Campbell’s.
Before joining Tastewise, Michael led marketing at Impossible Foods, where he spearheaded a brand repositioning, launched over 60 new SKUs, and built go-to-market strategies across retail and foodservice. He also held marketing leadership roles at General Mills for more than a decade, driving innovation and brand growth for household names like Yoplait, Betty Crocker, and Old El Paso. His earlier work in natural and organic foods included marketing leadership at Manitoba Harvest.
Michael is a 2022 Marketing Academy Scholar and holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
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