Beverage Distribution Is Changing. Here’s What We’re Seeing.

There was a lot of movement in beverage distribution in 2025, and we don’t think that conversation is going away anytime soon.

RNDC exited California, major supplier portfolios moved around, and distributor relationships continued to shift across the country. At the same time, everyone is heading into 2026 a little more cautious. Consumer demand has softened, inventories are tighter, and there is more pressure across the industry to make every dollar and every resource count.

For independent brands, that makes route to market a really important conversation.

Getting signed by a distributor is great, but it doesn’t mean someone is going to build the market for you. Distributors have a lot of brands to manage. Someone still has to get in front of buyers, open accounts, build programming, train staff, support placements, and make sure the product actually moves once it gets there.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work with a big distributor. Sometimes that is absolutely the right answer. Sometimes an independent distributor makes more sense. In markets where direct distribution is an option, that can make sense too. A brand doing 100 cases a month probably shouldn’t have the same route-to-market strategy as a brand doing 10,000.

We also think brands need to look at the entire cost of entering a market, not just the distributor margin. If you need an importer, warehouse, compliance support, salespeople, marketing support, samples, programming, and someone managing all of those relationships, suddenly entering a new state gets expensive really quickly.

And this is where we see a lot of independent brands get ahead of themselves. Being available in ten states sounds great. Having ten states that actually produce meaningful business is a very different thing.

We would rather see a brand build a few markets really well, understand what is driving the business, and then use what it learned to expand intelligently.

The distributor is still a really important part of that. We just don’t think distribution should be confused with market development.

Going into 2026, brands should know who is responsible for selling the product, who is responsible for moving it, who owns the account relationships, what happens after the first placement, and how much all of it is going to cost.