How to Track Sales for Your CPG Brand
(Without Getting Buried in Data)
If you're selling into retail, working with distributors, or trying to build momentum online, you’ve probably asked yourself:
“Are we doing well?”
“What should we be watching?”
“Is this normal?”
Tracking your performance doesn’t require expensive dashboards or full-time analysts. What it does require is consistency, context, and a basic understanding of which numbers actually tell the story of how your brand is performing.
Here’s how to track your sales performance as a food or beverage brand—without getting overwhelmed.
Start With Velocity: Units Per Store Per Week
If you're in retail, your top priority is velocity—how many units are selling per store per week (UPSPW). It’s not enough to count cases sold to your distributor. You need to know what's moving off the shelf. Velocity is the metric that retailers, brokers, and investors use to gauge whether a product is working.
Even if you only get store-level POS data quarterly, tracking velocity across your top 10 stores tells you what’s healthy, what’s flat, and where you may need to support sales with demos, better placement, or pricing strategy. If you’re not tracking velocity, you’re missing the most actionable insight in your business.
You need to be able to answer without hesitation:
How many cases a week does your best location sell through?
How many units a day is a typical store clearing?
How many pallets a month are you shipping from your production?
Know Where Your Sales Are Coming From, And What They're Costing You
Every brand has multiple channels—DTC, retail, distributor, Amazon, events—but not all channels are created equal. It's critical to track channel-level sales, both in revenue and margin. You might be selling more through your distributor than your own store, but are you actually making more?
You don't need to obsess over every breakdown, but you should be able to look at your numbers each month and say:
“This is where our money came from. This is where our profit lives.”
This helps you avoid the trap of growing top-line revenue without growing profitability.
Watch Your Repeat Rate—It’s Your Best Indicator of Product Fit
If you sell online or through E-Commerce platforms, your repeat purchase rate is one of the strongest indicators of brand health. A high repeat rate tells you your product delivers on its promise, your price is justified, and your customer experience is working. A low repeat rate means you’re burning money to get one-time customers and not building anything sustainable.
You don’t need complex CRM tools to track this. Just start with your pre-built analytics or a basic export of your order history. Set a calendar reminder to check it monthly. It’ll tell you more than most marketing dashboards ever will.
Don’t Confuse Expansion With Progress
It’s easy to feel like you’re growing just because you’re adding doors. But if your per-store sales are dropping while your store count is rising, you’re not scaling—you’re spreading thin. Make sure you're tracking velocity alongside distribution growth. The goal isn’t just more doors—it’s better performance in every door.
If you're not sure where to start, just look at the average weekly sales in your top 10 stores. That’s your baseline. Everything else is noise until you improve or repeat that.
How to Track It Without Fancy Tools
You don’t need software subscriptions to build visibility. A basic Google Sheet or spreadsheet with weekly or monthly inputs can give you everything you need. Include rows for each sales channel, your top retailers, and a place for notes—like promotions or demo days—that might explain dips or spikes.
Use your distributor portals, even if they’re clunky. Ask your buyers or brokers for POS data—they’ll often share it if you show them you’re serious about performance. And if you're DTC, use Shopify, Google Analytics, and even email clickthroughs to spot patterns in customer behavior.
What Not to Track—Yet
Don’t get lost in the weeds chasing impressions, reach, or vanity metrics. If you’re not selling through Meta or Google, impressions don’t pay the bills. Same for engagement on Instagram or TikTok—it may build brand presence, but until it connects to real sales, it’s just noise.
Instead, focus your limited time and brain space on tracking what moves product, what drives margin, and what teaches you something about your customer.
Want Help Turning Your Numbers Into a Plan?
We help food and beverage brands make sense of their sales data—no dashboards required. If you’re not sure what’s working, or just need a second set of eyes on your numbers, let’s talk.