Most food manufacturers select agencies based on price or promises alone. The critical factor determining success or failure comes down to one overlooked detail: who actually owns the broker relationships. Read the full article here https://presenture.com/what-is-a-food-marketing-agency/
Taking food products national presents one of the biggest challenges food manufacturers face. Building a sales team costs a fortune. Finding quality brokers seems nearly impossible. Understanding which distributors actually move product takes years of experience. Most manufacturers approach this problem by searching for a food marketing agency. They compare prices. They listen to pitches. They sign contracts. And most of them make a critical mistake that they will not discover until years later. Here is the mistake: they sign contracts where the agency owns all the broker relationships. Think about what that means. The agency controls the connections to distributors. The agency owns the relationships with the brokers who sell the products. The agency holds all the data about customers and sales performance. If that relationship ends for any reason, the manufacturer starts over from zero. Years of work, gone. The U.S. foodservice distribution market alone represents roughly three hundred seventy billion dollars annually. Sysco, US Foods, and Performance Food Group control about thirty-five percent of that market combined. Getting products into distribution through these channels requires established relationships that take years to develop. An alternative model exists. Some agencies operate as managed service providers. They build custom broker networks for each manufacturer, but the manufacturer retains direct ownership of every broker contract. The manufacturer owns the relationships. If that agency relationship ends, the manufacturer keeps everything. The brokers. The distributor relationships. The sales data. All of it stays with the manufacturer. This matters most for mid-market food companies. Companies large enough to need national distribution, but not large enough to build internal sales teams across multiple regions. These manufacturers need the expertise and infrastructure an agency provides, but they cannot afford to create dependencies that threaten business continuity. Consider the foodservice channel specifically. It encompasses approximately five thousand distributors across sixty-five distinct markets. Sysco alone reported eighty-one point four billion dollars in revenue for fiscal year twenty twenty-five and serves approximately seven hundred thirty thousand customer locations. Building relationships at that scale requires specialized expertise and established connections. When evaluating food marketing agencies, ask one question before anything else: who will own the broker contracts? If the answer is the agency, understand what that means for long-term business continuity. If the answer is the manufacturer, that indicates an agency operating on the managed service provider model. That structure protects manufacturer interests while still providing the expertise and infrastructure needed for national distribution. Beyond ownership structure, evaluate geographic coverage depth. Does the agency have active brokers in all sixty-five foodservice markets? Verify distributor relationships. What level of connection does the agency have with major broadline distributors? Headquarters-level relationships open doors that regional connections cannot. Without that visibility, decisions become guesswork. The biggest mistake manufacturers make? Signing contracts where the agency owns all the broker relationships. That creates dependency. Keep those contracts in the manufacturer's company name. Always. For manufacturers ready to explore national distribution while protecting long-term interests, the conversation starts with understanding specific goals and determining genuine fit. Good partnerships begin with honest alignment, not sales pitches. Learn more at presenture dot com. Presenture City: Houston Address: 1 Riverway Drive Website: https://presenture.com/ Phone: +1 713 862 4499