Delisting: Best Practices to Avoid It

The delisting of all or part of a product range is what all food manufacturers fear.

In both retail and Foodservice, the period of commercial negotiations is particularly conducive to using this lever to secure the best prices on the distributor side.

However, the risk of being removed from shelves must be monitored throughout the year.

What are the stakes and the main causes of delisting? And how can it be avoided? Let’s look at how sell-out data, managed through a dedicated software solution, can be part of the answer.

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Delisting: Definition

Delisting refers to the removal of a product from store shelves.

The decision is made by the distributor—at the level of the retail banner, a buying group, or an individual store. Delisting can be partial (a single product) or total, in which case it affects all products of a brand.

The consequences for the supplier are immediate in terms of lost revenue. Distributors also take a risk: when consumers can no longer find their usual products on the shelf, they may switch to another retailer.

💡 Delisting is regulated by Article L.442-6 of the French Commercial Code, in order to prevent abusive product withdrawals.

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Delisting: A Major Issue for SMEs

SMEs vs. Large Groups: Equal Importance in Retailn

SMEs and mid-sized companies (TPE, PME, ETI) are key partners for large-scale retail and a true engine of growth.

The figures from the 2024 SME/Retail Barometer prove it:

• 💶 44% of total turnover—nearly €1 out of every €2 spent in retail—comes from TPE/PME/ETI products

• 📈 47% of retailers’ turnover growth since 2017 has been generated by these suppliers

• 🔖 86% of national brands are manufactured by TPE/PME/ETI

• 🛒 Two-thirds of private label (MDD) turnover comes from French TPE/PME products

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Unequal Exposure to Delisting Risks

Yet during commercial negotiations, large groups clearly carry more weight. While the highly publicized delisting of PepsiCo by Carrefour in 2024 made headlines, such cases remain rare given the power of major brands.

Smaller companies, on the other hand, have far less leverage. Highlighting an increasingly unbalanced power relationship, Léonard Prunier, President of FEEF, sent a letter to the French Prime Minister on February 6, 2025. The federation is calling for negotiations to be adapted to supplier size (with a threshold of €350 million in global turnover) and for the protection of SME/ETI pricing.

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The Main Causes of Delisting in Depots or Stores

Beyond disagreements during commercial negotiations, delisting can occur at any time of the year.

Lack of Product Performance Monitoring

If a product does not sell well, distributors may delist it to replace it with another product in order to maintain sufficient sales volume. The only way to prevent this is through continuous monitoring of shelf performance.

This requires obtaining and analyzing point-of-sale data (in retail) and warehouse exit data (in Foodservice)—something that 80% of food manufacturers still do not do.

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Changes in Distributor Assortment Strategies

Beyond commercial considerations, distributors may revise their assortments and remove products. Some retailers reduce assortment size to simplify in-store operations, while others prioritize private labels or entry-level products.

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Shifts in Consumer Behavior

Today’s consumers are demanding ever more innovation, quality, and added value in food products. Distributors regularly refresh their offerings to meet these expectations. Brands that fail to keep up with trends risk being replaced by competitors.

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Avoiding Delisting with KaryonFood

From Sales Directors to Category Managers, KaryonFood puts data at the service of sales performance monitoring to anticipate and prevent delisting.

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Monitoring Product Performance by Store

Failing to track in-store performance is one of the main causes of delisting. By negotiating access to your sell-out data, you can measure actual product sales.

KaryonFood simplifies analysis by centralizing all data—whether from retail or Foodservice warehouses. KPIs are automatically calculated and compared with previous periods: sales volumes, revenue, number of SKUs sold, and more.

In just a few clicks, you can identify the stores that have lost the most volume and pinpoint the underperforming products in each location. You can then act immediately to correct the situation and avoid product withdrawal.

⏱️ On the KaryonFood platform, data is updated monthly.

“In case of a decline, this allows us to react immediately and support the distributor more closely. Waiting three months to realize we’ve lost volume on certain SKUs would be too late,” explains Jimmy Ranson, National Key Account Foodservice at Vandemoortele. A valuable time saver.

Comparing Product Performance Across Distributors

Comparing sales across distributors is easy thanks to a unique KaryonFood feature: the platform harmonizes sell-out data regardless of distributor format.

This makes it simple to identify performance gaps between retailers. You become proactive in spotting inter-distributor differences and can precisely guide sales teams to prevent the delisting of ranges that are profitable elsewhere.

Managing Promotional Plans to Ensure Product Visibility

To boost sales of a product at risk of delisting, you may launch a promotion—but how do you know if it works?

With its latest innovation, the “Promo Module,” KaryonFood addresses this need directly.

For each promotional plan, the module provides a dashboard with all relevant KPIs. You can instantly assess campaign performance against your objectives—whether increasing sales, purchase frequency, or recruiting new end users.

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An Internal and External Collaboration Tool

A solution like KaryonFood is designed to facilitate communication and collaboration—both internally and with distributor partners.

Internally, harmonized data makes meetings more efficient and decisions faster. In just a few clicks, underperforming SKUs are identified and field actions are triggered. Regional managers prioritize visits to the most critical stores and focus efforts on products at risk of delisting.

With distributors, you speak the same language using shared, reliable figures. Sell-out analysis strengthens collaboration and helps both parties understand why certain products are declining—and define joint action plans (promotions, visibility, etc.).

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Support for Commercial Negotiations

Having more leverage in annual negotiations is another benefit of data sharing. With KaryonFood, you rely on robust, trusted figures, making discussions more constructive and balanced, in a true win-win approach.

Marine Bourguignon, Senior Category Manager at Bel Food Service, highlights the positive impact of KaryonFood in negotiations: “This allows us to bring solutions to our clients so that we can grow together and define objectives for the year.”

By managing sell-out data through the KaryonFood SaaS solution, you gain all the insights needed to keep your products performing—and therefore indispensable on the shelf.

Curious to see a real-life example of how KaryonFood can help prevent product delisting?