The DTC to retail strategy is how modern CPG brands buy credibility with category buyers. Build demand online, capture the sales data, then walk into the retailer meeting with evidence instead of promises. Recently, a $500M food company handed us an RFP. It named Poppi, Olipop, Liquid Death, and Liquid IV as the exact model it wants copied for its new brands. So this is the playbook those brands actually ran — with the real numbers, the parts everyone gets wrong, and what retail buyers count as proof.

What is a DTC to retail strategy?

The key phrase is evidence engine, not profit center. However the case studies get told, none of these brands got rich on shipping cans to doorsteps. In fact, most of them actively avoided it. What they built online was something more valuable than margin: a dataset no buyer could argue with. Because retail runs on evidence. Circana, the data company retailers themselves rely on, puts it plainly: if a new item's velocity is below the category average, expanded distribution isn't coming.

How the three playbooks actually ran

1. Poppi: no DTC at all — Amazon rank as the proof

Here's the detail most retellings miss: Poppi never built a DTC business. Founder Allison Ellsworth watched other beverage brands lose money shipping heavy liquid and skipped it entirely. Instead, Poppi made Amazon its evidence engine and TikTok its demand engine. By 2022, two years after launching on Amazon, Poppi held 44% of the functional beverage category there. At that point, its Amazon storefront was the majority of company revenue. By early 2023 it was the #1 soda on Amazon, with sales up 2.4x year over year. Meanwhile, founder-led TikTok content racked up billions of views and told every buyer in America the demand was real. The result: roughly $13M in revenue in 2020 became $500M+ in 2024, and PepsiCo bought the brand for $1.95B in 2025. Amazon rank plus TikTok heat was the whole proof package.

2. Olipop: DTC as the lab, then a deliberate shrink

Olipop ran the sequence differently. It started on actual shelves: 40 Northern California grocery stores and $852K in first-year revenue. Then the pandemic made its DTC site the growth engine, reaching close to half of revenue in 2020. But look at what Olipop used DTC for. Subscriptions proved repeat purchase, SMS and email programs built retention cohorts, and flavor drops tested demand before retail ever saw them. That repeat-purchase data is exactly what buyers can't get anywhere else. As Walmart, Target, Kroger, and Costco opened up, Olipop let ecommerce shrink to ~15% of the business on purpose. Today the brand sits at roughly $400–500M in 2024 revenue, a $1.85B valuation, distribution in ~50,000 stores, and a stated $1B goal. The DTC channel didn't scale the company. It de-risked every retail decision that did.

3. Liquid Death: website scarcity, then scan-data momentum

Liquid Death spent its first year website-only, selling canned water to an internet audience that found the joke irresistible. That online cult was the proof that got it into Whole Foods in early 2020. There it reportedly became the fastest-selling water on the shelf — a scan-data story that then opened 7-Eleven, Publix, and beyond. Amazon came later and kept compounding the evidence: #1 best seller in its water categories, with tens of thousands of branded searches a week. Retail scan sales hit $333M in 2024 against a $1.4B valuation, and the brand is now expanding into energy drinks. Notably, its own website today mostly sells merch — the water business lives at retail, where it always intended to end up.

What retail buyers actually count as proof

We wrote before about what retail buyers are actually buying — risk reduction, not romance. The DTC to retail strategy works because it converts your marketing into their favorite kind of risk reduction: numbers. Here's what counts:

The DTC to retail strategy, step by step

Here's how we'd run the DTC to retail strategy for a food or beverage brand today. The sequence matters more than the budget.

1. Pick your evidence channel deliberately

For most food and beverage brands, Amazon is the evidence engine. Shipping economics favor multipacks, and the rank, review, and search data are public currency. A heavy, low-margin product may skip owned DTC entirely, exactly as Poppi did. Use your own site only where it earns its keep: subscriptions, bundles, and the retention data buyers can't get elsewhere.

2. Build the demand engine that feeds it

Evidence channels don't fill themselves. So demand generation — creator content, founder-led social, short-form video — is what turns a storefront into a dataset. This is the engine we detailed in our TikTok organic strategy for CPG and food brands. In fact, it's the half of the playbook most brands underfund while overspending on the storefront itself.

3. Instrument everything

Poppi's team used category-level Amazon data to steer both keywords and TikTok spend. Do the same. Track velocity by SKU, repeat rate by cohort, review velocity, branded search volume, and which content spikes map to which sales spikes. If you can't chart it, you can't pitch it.

4. Package the proof like a buyer reads it

One page. Velocity versus category average, repeat rate, review count and rating, branded search trend, and the social numbers behind them — updated monthly. The pitch isn't "our brand is beloved." The pitch is "this item will turn faster than what's on your shelf today, and here's the evidence."

5. Convert proof into doors — then defend them

Enter retail where the evidence gets a fair test. Think regional chains and scout programs like Sprouts' foraging team. Add Costco roadshows, where you sample all day and leave with conversion data, or pilot doors at a mainstream chain. Then concentrate demand around those doors — geo-targeted paid and creator activity — so launch velocity clears the bar. Finally, as distribution scales, let ecommerce shrink as a share of revenue without panic. That's the plan working, not failing. For how the channels relate at scale, see our take on DTC vs retail marketing strategy.