Regional CPG brand
From Local Routes to Smarter Growth
Route-to-market clarity — basket analysis turning distribution data into growth moves.
The starting point
A regional CPG brand had grown through traditional route distribution — salespeople visiting small retailers, taking orders, restocking shelves — but at hundreds of points, leadership lost route-level visibility. Sales lived in distributor spreadsheets and handwritten orders, so they couldn’t see which routes were growing, what baskets looked like by store type, or whether territories were really being covered.
The method
We centralized POS records, route logs, and order histories into one analytical environment — first cleaning inconsistent route IDs and product codes — then built dashboards around route performance, territory coverage, and product penetration, drilling region → route → retailer. Basket analysis compared similar stores to surface specific gaps, giving each visit a concrete call to action ranked by revenue potential rather than a wall of charts.
The result
For the first time, leadership could hold data-informed conversations about distributor performance, measuring against comparable routes instead of arbitrary quotas. Marketing shifted from blanket regional promos to targeted pushes by store cluster and real product gap, and the brand expanded into two new regions by modeling expected penetration before committing — turning expensive guesswork into data-informed market entry.