[agrocrag]

Super happy they unloaded the overstock! What an incredibly stressful time, been there before and it can feel like the world is crumbling.

In a past life, I ran a small business selling lip balm to small grocery / specialty stores. It started small and then with some good ol' fashion cold calling, we got into more and more stores. Eventually direct store sales is too much for a handful of folks to operate (and if your goal is to expand outside of your local region).

The next step (which they are at) was to start working with one of the big distros (I'm guessing for them it was UNFI or KeHE). You eventually get to a point where most buyers at larger store chains (Kroger, Whole Foods, etc.) eventually just want to streamline their ordering, which means moving to a distributor (also the Regional / National buyers for the categories eventually just push that way if your sales are growing rapidly).

Looks like they mentally had gotten to that point and did the right thing, find and expert to take you there.

If I had to guess on how this whole issue actually went down, the broker / consultant negotiated all the terms with the distro and basically they (the biz owners) didn't clearly read the contract details (putting all your trust in the expert without much verification). I was in that same position once and learning the distributors industry terms is tough to figure out without outside resources / guidance. As they write in the post, the broker basically let them down, while they equally leaned on the broker too much for obfuscating industry knowledge.