Which on-trade accounts should my brand team investigate first?
By Better Bartender · Published
Prioritise accounts where a clear commercial question meets reliable evidence and an action your team can take. A venue with 120 litres of category sales and no observed brand sales is a lead to investigate, not proof of an available listing.
Start with three different jobs
Protecting an existing account, helping an account grow and investigating a new opportunity require different conversations. Separate them before ranking venues. A single score can hide why an account appeared and encourage a sales team to treat missing information as an opportunity.
Keep the period, category, unit and reporting coverage visible. Check whether the account belongs to the same reporting cohort in both periods. New visibility in a dataset does not necessarily mean the venue is a new customer.
A worked account review
The following invented four-week observations assume complete reporting and verified product mapping. Litres are comparable within the selected category.
- Account A: category volume 120 litres; brand volume zero. Investigate listing, availability and venue fit before calling it whitespace you can win.
- Account B: brand volume falls from 40 to 20 litres; category volume falls from 200 to 100. The brand remains at 20% of category volume. Start with the wider trading decline.
- Account C: brand volume falls from 30 to 15 litres while category volume stays at 150. Observed share falls from 20% to 10%. Investigate availability, menu use and competitor activity.
- Account D: one week of reports is missing. Resolve coverage before classifying a decline or absence.
Accounts B and C both show a 50% fall in brand volume, yet suggest different first questions. Account A could be promising, but its sales record cannot establish who makes buying decisions or whether an exclusivity agreement exists.
What is an on-trade whitespace opportunity?
In an observed-sales analysis, a useful starting definition is a category-active account with no observed sales for the selected brand in the chosen period. Write that definition down. It differs from a menu-listing gap, a geographic gap in your distribution records or an account outside your distributor’s route.
Qualify a lead with current account knowledge: opening status, venue format, price positioning, buyer contact, existing supplier arrangements and practical service fit. A small cocktail bar and a high-volume pub can need very different offers, even when their category totals look similar.
Build a transparent call plan
- Choose a task: protect, grow or investigate.
- Exclude incomplete comparisons or mark them for data repair.
- Sort within the task using the relevant observed metric.
- Read the account detail and write the specific question.
- Record the conversation, outcome and follow-up date.
Useful outcome measures include qualified conversations and confirmed next steps. A ranked list alone is not a count of sales-ready buyers. Do not attach a forecast value unless the assumptions and conversion evidence support it.
Where Better Bartender fits
Better Bartender puts drinks-brand intelligence behind the next commercial question. Review distribution and rate-of-sale definitions and our reporting methodology before interpreting a demonstration.