Blog · Wallet share and penetration · Foodservice distributors
Why a foodservice distributor needs category share at the chain and at the site, how the two disagree and what each disagreement means, the roll-up that produces both from one delivery ledger, and the two lists the sales team works from: chain gaps for the national account manager and site gaps for the route rep.
A national account manager reports the chain at 80 percent compliance and calls it a good quarter. The route rep in the north-east has thirty of that chain's kitchens buying produce from a local rival and has never been told. Both are looking at the same delivery ledger from a different height. This guide sets out the two levels, the roll-up that produces both, and the two lists that come out of it.
Chain level:
Chain compliance = contracted category spend delivered ÷ spend the agreement expects
Site level:
Site share = category spend at the site ÷ the site's expected category spend, against the chain norm (median across the chain's sites)
Site to chain is the roll-up; the chain figure is the sum of its sites and the assertion holds:
chain delivered spend = Σ sites' delivered spend
Site and chain identifiers only.
| Chain compliance | Site pattern | Meaning | Whose list |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | Even across sites | Agreement honoured | Nobody's |
| High | A few sites near zero | New sites not onboarded, or local leakage | Route rep |
| Low | Even across sites | Category not in the agreement's practice, or a competitor at chain level | National account manager |
| Low | Most high, a region low | A regional buyer or a competing depot | Both |
The last row is the common one, and the chain figure alone cannot show it.
One chain, one category, one quarter.
| Level | Delivered | Expected | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chain | $1.44m | $1.80m | 80% |
| Sites, 120 of 150 | $1.37m | $1.44m | 95% |
| Sites, 30 of 150 | $70,000 | $360,000 | 19% |
The thirty sites are in two regions and were opened in the last eighteen months. Chain compliance is fine on average and there is $290,000 of produce a quarter going elsewhere from kitchens under a contract that says it should come from us. The national account manager raises onboarding with the chain; the route reps get thirty sites on their list with a value each.
Only the chain figure reported. The thirty sites hide inside 80 percent.
Site norm taken from the segment. A chain site compared to independents of its size gets the wrong norm. Compare it to its sisters.
New sites missing from the site master. They are delivered to and not rolled up, and the chain figure is wrong too. Every delivered site maps to a chain, or the assertion fails and the site is listed.
Route and chain lists mixed. The route rep gets a chain compliance figure they cannot act on. Two lists, two owners.
Mapped once, the delivery ledger and the site master produce chain compliance and site share every month, with the disagreements listed and each line assigned. Covirage builds this from the exports as they are. The foodservice page describes the setup, and the drop frequency guide covers the site-level measures for independent kitchens.
Contracted category spend delivered by us across all the chain's sites, over the spend the agreement expects, for the period. It is a compliance figure and belongs to the national account manager.
Category share per kitchen against the chain's own norm, which is the median share across that chain's sites. A site well below its own chain's norm is a kitchen buying from someone else, and it belongs to the route rep.
The segment norm compares a kitchen to similar independent kitchens. The chain norm compares a site to its sister sites under the same agreement, which is the fairer test: they have the same menu, the same contract and the same expected basket.