How to get a food product into Australian supermarkets

Fix your label before you pitch, because a buyer can reject a product on labelling alone. Australian packaged food follows the FSANZ Food Standards Code, the national rulebook run by Food Standards Australia New Zealand, and enforced by state health authorities. A retail food label must carry a nutrition information panel, an ingredient list in descending order by weight, the food name, net weight, a supplier name and address, and date marking such as best before or use by.

The nutrition information panel, the NIP, is the standard table of energy, protein, fat, saturated fat, carbohydrate, sugars and sodium per serve and per 100 grams or millilitres. Get the serving size, rounding and units right, and match the panel to your actual recipe and lab-tested values. Buyers and their technical teams read these panels closely, and a mismatch between the panel and the ingredients is a fast path to a no.

Country-of-origin labelling is a separate legal regime for most food sold in Australia, enforced under Australian Consumer Law, usually the standard mark with the kangaroo triangle and a bar chart showing the Australian ingredient proportion. Treat labelling as engineering, not design. Verify every mandatory element against the current Code rather than copying a competitor pack that may itself be wrong.

Declare allergens exactly as the Code requires, because this is a safety and legal duty, not a marketing choice. Plain-language allergen labelling rules mandate that ingredients such as milk, egg, peanut, tree nuts, soy, wheat, gluten, fish, crustacea, sesame, lupin and added sulphites appear in a consistent, bolded format in the ingredient list and in a summary statement. The wording and placement are prescribed, so follow the current requirements rather than an older pack you have on hand.

Cross-contact is where many small producers get caught. If your line also runs a product containing a declarable allergen, you may need a precautionary statement, and you must be able to show the controls behind it. Buyers ask for this because a recall damages them as much as you. Your HACCP plan and allergen management should back every claim on the pack.

Country of origin sits under Australian Consumer Law and the ACCC, not FSANZ, and applies to almost all food. Most packaged food needs the standard mark showing whether it is made in, product of, or packed in Australia, plus the proportion of Australian ingredients. Imported food carries its own origin statement. Get both the allergen and origin claims verified, because either one wrong is enough to fail a technical review.

Show a buyer you can make the product safely and deliver it on time, every time. Major grocers expect food manufactured under HACCP, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, the internationally recognised food-safety system, usually evidenced by a recognised certification such as an SQF or BRCGS audit at the site. If you make in a contract facility, its certification and audit history is part of your pitch, so gather it early.

Shelf life is a number you must be able to defend with stability and micro testing, not a guess. Retailers plan replenishment and promotional cycles around it, and many want a minimum remaining shelf life on delivery, often expressed as a percentage of total life. A short or unproven shelf life narrows the retailers who can range you and raises your risk of markdowns and waste.

Reliability is measured as DIFOT, delivered in full and on time, and it is a scorecard you live or die by once you are ranged. Chargebacks, penalty deductions from your invoice for short or late or non-compliant deliveries, typically run 1 to 5 percent of invoice value and climb fast if your supply is shaky. A HACCP-certified third-party logistics partner, a 3PL, that handles pick, pack and compliant delivery protects that score.

Before you pitch, model whether the deal makes you money, because a ranging win at the wrong price loses money on every unit. Retailer margin, the retailer's markup between what they pay you and the shelf price, commonly runs roughly 25 to 45 percent depending on category. On top of that sits trade spend, the rebates, promotional funding and co-op you pay the retailer out of gross sales, which commonly runs 10 to 25 percent.

Lay it out as a pricing waterfall, the step-by-step drop from shelf price down to what you actually bank after margin, trade spend, chargebacks and freight. Food is a thin-margin, high-volume category, so small errors here compound. Work backwards from a realistic shelf price to your ex-factory cost and check there is still a viable margin left for you at expected volumes.

Do this maths before the first meeting, not after. A buyer will push on price, promotional depth and introductory offers, and you need to know your floor. If the honest answer is that the numbers do not work at the retailer's likely terms, it is better to learn that on a spreadsheet than after your first invoice. Model the numbers first.

Get onto shelf by pitching into a category range review, the scheduled window when a retailer reassesses which products sit in a category. Range reviews happen roughly every six months per category, so timing your approach to that calendar matters as much as the pitch itself. Miss the window and you wait for the next one. Woolworths, Coles and the independents supplied through Metcash all run structured supplier and ranging processes you can research and prepare for.

The buyer case is more than a nice product: expect category and consumer evidence, your compliance pack, pricing and promotional plan, and DIFOT capability. Behind a win sits real onboarding, GS1 barcodes, an EDI build that can take months, and store-count decisions, and the first purchase order often lands one to six months later. If your product carries therapeutic or disease claims rather than food-type nutrition claims, that side is scoped to TGA specialists; we run the retail and fulfilment half.

This is where an experienced agent earns its place. Built for Retail has ranged brands into Chemist Warehouse, Woolworths, Coles and Priceline, and past rangings never promise yours because the buyer decides. For imported food we run the retail half and coordinate with your customs broker; we are not the importer of record. The Retail-Readiness Sprint is a fixed 15,000 dollars for a single retailer, about four weeks, modelling your trade spend, pricing waterfall and compliance gap. Use the contact form on this page.