---
title: "A Few Case Studies: What Refrigerated Distributors Should Do!"
description: "Refrigerated foods are those stored, transported, and sold at 0°-10°C with a shelf life of up to 30 days, including dairy and juice products. This article focuses on low-temperature dairy products. Unlike ambient beverages, these require strict temperature control and have short shelf lives, making them prone to spoilage. For new distributors entering this market, the challenges are numerous. This article offers practical guidance through real case studies, covering product selection, channel development, relationship maintenance, and consumer habit formation."
author: "曾文忠 陈行军"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2015-05-25"
language: "en"
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# A Few Case Studies: What Refrigerated Distributors Should Do!

> Refrigerated foods are those stored, transported, and sold at 0°-10°C with a shelf life of up to 30 days, including dairy and juice products. This article focuses on low-temperature dairy products. Unlike ambient beverages, these require strict temperature control and have short shelf lives, making them prone to spoilage. For new distributors entering this market, the challenges are numerous. This article offers practical guidance through real case studies, covering product selection, channel development, relationship maintenance, and consumer habit formation.

Refrigerated foods generally refer to products stored, transported, and sold at 0°-10°C with a shelf life of up to 30 days, including dairy products and juices. This article only discusses low-temperature dairy products.
Low-temperature foods differ from ambient beverages: they require strict temperature control and have short shelf lives, and any oversight can lead to spoilage! As a new refrigerated product distributor entering the market, with countless tasks at hand, how do you start and how do you survive?
This article does not discuss theory; it only provides some reference for friends interested in operating refrigerated food businesses through a few real cases.
How to Select Products
The author once talked to a distributor. Two days after the first meeting, the client asked to sign the contract. Later, during a chat, he told me the reasons for deciding so quickly to choose our company's products:
First, low-temperature milk, especially low-temperature yogurt, is increasingly accepted by consumers; this is a rising industry.
Second, in Shenzhen's traditional low-temperature product channels, only Chenguang Milk dominated the market; other brands were basically absent. There were also few distributors operating low-temperature milk, so there was little competition.
Third, Bright Milk is also a nationally known brand. Although it was just entering the Shenzhen market, the company has strong strength, with a factory in Guangzhou, ensuring after-sales support.
Fourth, after carefully comparing Bright Milk's products with Chenguang Milk's, the taste was similar; Chenguang Milk is mostly packaged in gable-top cartons, while Bright Milk uses mostly flexible plastic and plastic bottle packaging, so the packaging differs significantly.
Fifth, the gross profit for low-temperature milk distribution is over 20%. For Bright's new 180g plain yogurt, the company further reduced the price by 20% for distributors to operate.
Sixth, the company does not force inventory and ensures a 3% return/exchange rate for products.
Finally, and most importantly, the investment is small. A van was purchased upfront; initial stock costs only about 10,000 yuan; a 20-square-meter warehouse rents for about 1,500 yuan per month with two months' deposit and one month's rent; two air-cooled refrigerators cost about 2,000 yuan, and one chest freezer about 1,500 yuan; personnel are just himself and his brother; total investment is less than 50,000 yuan.
How to Develop New Channels
The characteristics of refrigerated products determine that they cannot enter all channel customers. They can only selectively enter certain channels and customers. Therefore, customer selection is crucial. Who drinks low-temperature milk? Where do they buy it? When do they buy it? These are questions distributors must pay attention to.
Shenzhen BYD Baolong factory has about 40,000 employees. There is one factory welfare store (small shop), and the canteen has two floors, but no low-temperature milk products were sold there. Although it was known that BYD had good sales, management was strict, and ordinary people could not enter, let alone sell products.
Later, after multiple inquiries, it was learned that the person with the best relationship with the welfare store was a salesperson from Uni-President. After several communications, the Uni-President salesperson brought the distributor into the BYD living area and successfully found the welfare store manager. Initially, after a brief introduction, they gave them a box of 180g plain yogurt to try. They all thought it tasted good, but they worried about the short shelf life, relatively high price (compared to ambient beverages), and lack of display space (refrigerators were fully stocked). The distributor immediately promised: full return and exchange, and if the initial stock didn't sell, it would be considered a gift to make friends. Initially, they visited every two days, settled accounts on actual sales, and provided a refrigerator (display cooler). The manager thought it was worth trying.
In this way, BYD was entered. In the first week, they delivered three times, and later almost daily. After getting familiar, they introduced the distributor to BYD's Pingshan factory welfare store. Later, the canteen also adopted this approach; one refrigerator was not enough, so another was added. They placed them on both floors of the canteen, and also in the headquarters and Huizhou Danshui canteens.
How to Maintain Customer Relationships
A distributor once handled Weiwei Daheng. At that time, Weiwei Daheng launched a 200g bagged Tianshanxue red date milk at a very low price, but it was difficult at first, selling at most 5,000 bags a month. Later, because the customer was injured, he told the delivery worker that other products would be delivered as usual, but for each bag of Tianshanxue red date milk sold, the worker would get a 0.1 yuan commission (the gross profit was about 0.3 yuan per bag at the time), settled weekly. In the first week, sales matched the previous month; in the second week, they doubled; the monthly sales turned out to be ten times the previous month. The worker was happy and worked hard, with no other investment. Later, this product stabilized at around 100,000 bags per month.
There was a chain bakery in Guanlan with only 4 stores at the time. The only competing low-temperature milk product was Chenguang. Because it was a bit far and maintenance was insufficient, they could only sell about 500 units a month. Later, they transferred it to a local distributor. The next month, he said they sold nearly 5,000 units. When asked how, he said, "The bakery girls determine your product's sales and display." Every visit, he would give milk to the girls in the store (the boss was rarely there), asking them to help sell, with a 0.1 yuan commission per unit, and sincerely praised and thanked them, visiting every two days. By the fourth month, at the girls' strong suggestion, the boss cleared out the competing product.
How to Make Consumers Buy Habitually
Shenzhen Yipinxuan Bakery has 40 stores, and only Chenguang Milk and our company's products were sold there. When Chenguang was dominant, they never thought of other ways to promote sales; they just relied on natural flow and waiting for store staff to stock. In light of this, I ran two rounds of promotions.
The first round: At the Yipinxuan checkout counter, we posted an advertisement and required all staff to tell customers: Buy a Yipinxuan bread + 1 yuan to exchange for a designated yogurt. The difference was shared by the company and the distributor, lasting half a month. The distributor subsidized about 0.15 yuan per unit, totaling nearly 4,500 yuan.
The second month, we did another round: Again, at the checkout counter, we posted an advertisement and required all staff to tell customers: The combo of Yipinxuan pineapple bun + designated yogurt was 0.5 yuan cheaper than the original price. The difference was shared by the company and the distributor (the gross profit was enough that the distributor did not actually bear it), lasting half a month. After these two rounds, our company's product sales at Yipinxuan were basically three times that of Chenguang. Later, the distributor would do a similar promotion for one week every two months.
Of course, there are several other good channels for low-temperature milk, such as supermarkets, milk stores, schools, hotels, and home delivery and group buying are also essential. Distributors must assess their own strength and choose appropriate channels to enter. Service is the core of refrigerated food business. As long as you work diligently, do not wait or rely on others, develop quality customers, and run appropriate promotions, your business will become smoother and larger.
Source: Jinxiaoshang
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