Most food and drink founders track the wrong number. Here is the metric retailers actually use to decide who stays on shelf.
What your sales figures are not telling you
There is a number most food and drink founders track religiously. Total sales. Units moved. Distribution wins. New stockists. And I understand why. Those numbers feel like progress. They are visible, they are shareable, and they feel like the story of a brand gaining momentum.
But there is another number sitting quietly underneath all of it, one that tells you something far more important. And most founders are not looking at it nearly closely enough.
If you are already wondering whether something in your numbers might be worth examining more carefully, I offer a free discovery call where we can look at this together. Book yours here.
The number that actually tells you how your product is performing
More than 1,300 new food and drink products reach UK retailer shelves every year. According to Nielsen's Breakthrough Innovation Report, 76% of them are gone within twelve months. Nearly four in five products, each one representing a founder's savings, time, and conviction, quietly removed from shelf.
I have spent over ten years working with food and drink brands at different stages of their journey. And I think the reason behind that failure rate is more specific, and more fixable, than most people want to sit with.
The question worth asking is not "how many people bought my product?" It is "how many of those people came back to buy it a second time?" Those are completely different questions, and the gap between them is where the real answer lives.
Why the second purchase is the only one that truly counts
Your first sale is a trial. It can happen for all kinds of reasons: a strong shelf position, a promotional price, good packaging, a recommendation from a friend. None of those reasons have anything to do with how your product actually tastes or performs.
Your second sale is a verdict.
That is someone who tried your product, thought about it, and decided it was worth spending their money on again. It is a conscious choice made without any of the novelty of the first encounter. And the metric that tracks this is your repeat purchase rate.
If you are not measuring it, you are genuinely flying blind. Total sales figures alone tell you how many people were curious enough to try your product. Your repeat purchase rate tells you how many people liked it enough to come back.
This is what retailers are actually measuring
In 2016, Tesco launched Project Reset, the largest range rationalisation in the company's history, cutting 15% of listed products per year across three consecutive years. The University of East Anglia ran a study directly with Tesco to understand exactly how those decisions were made.
The findings were clear. Two metrics determined who stayed on shelf: customer penetration and repeat purchase rate.
This matches everything I hear at food industry events, particularly when founders are in the room with buyers. The question that comes up consistently is: "What is your repeat purchase rate?" Tesco is not unusual here. Cana, one of the leading FMCG data companies, describes repeat purchase rate as "the most fundamental metric" in your relationship with a retailer. McKinsey's research on high-performing food and drink brands places best-in-class performance at 60 to 70% repeat purchase rate compared to the category average.
And once you have been delisted, getting back on shelf is genuinely hard. The window to correct things closes faster than most founders expect.
The same logic applies if you are selling online
If your product lives on your own website, on Amazon, or through any other digital channel, the underlying dynamic is identical. Your algorithm visibility, your customer acquisition costs, your entire unit economics depend on people returning.
A strong first-purchase rate paired with a weak repeat rate means you are spending money replacing lost customers rather than building a loyal base. And the uncomfortable truth is that once a consumer has decided your product is not worth a second purchase, they very rarely reconsider. They simply move on to one of your competitors, often without ever leaving a review or explaining why.
So what actually drives people to come back?
Across multiple studies, multiple markets and multiple product categories, the research consistently points to the same answer.
It is taste.
Mintel's UK Food and Drink Influences Report published in 2026 is unambiguous: taste leads in food and drink choices and is "non-negotiable, even for those under financial strain." Attest surveyed 1,000 UK consumers specifically about functional drinks and found that 92% rated taste as important or very important, ranking it higher than price and health claims combined. Hodi's research reaches a similar conclusion: 85% of consumers put taste above price and health benefits when they decide whether to buy a product again.
And yet the assumption I encounter most often from founders is this: "My product is selling, so it must taste good enough." That belief is worth questioning directly.
Strong branding, a compelling health claim, smart distribution — these things drive trial. They are genuinely effective at getting someone to pick your product up for the first time. But taste is what determines whether they come back. Your repeat purchase rate is the score.
Flavour is not something to finalise at the end of the process
Flavour tends to get treated as almost incidental in product development. It is a food product, of course it tastes fine. But in a market as crowded as the UK food and drink space, even a minor imperfection in taste changes behaviour.
It does not have to be dramatic. Your product does not have to taste bad. It just has to taste slightly less exceptional than whatever is sitting next to it on the shelf. A lingering off note, a batch that comes out slightly different, a flavour profile that works in isolation but does not quite match how your consumer feels when they reach for it. These are the things that quietly erode repeat purchase before the numbers make it visible.
By the time the decline becomes impossible to ignore, you are already in a difficult conversation with your retailer.
A practical place to start
Go and find your repeat purchase rate. Compare it honestly to that 60 to 70% benchmark. And if it falls short, ask yourself one question: does my product taste as exceptional as it could, for the specific people actually buying it?
Not as functional. Not as well-branded. As genuinely tasty as it could be, for your target consumer, in the moment they actually use it.
Flavour strategy is not something reserved for brands with large development budgets. It is the difference between building something with real longevity and watching a listing slowly fade. And the good news is that taste can be fixed, when you know exactly where to look.
If you want to understand where your product stands on taste and what it would take to move your repeat purchase rate in the right direction, that is exactly the kind of conversation I am here for. Book a free discovery call and let us work through it together.
