So you’ve created something people love. A hot sauce with a compelling story. An artisan cheese winning awards at every competition you enter. A snack that literally disappears at parties before you can even grab one yourself.
Getting it made? That was the easy part.
Getting it into stores and restaurants across the country? That’s where most food manufacturers hit a wall.
Building an internal sales team drains resources faster than you’d expect. Good brokers are nearly impossible to find—the ones worth having are already booked solid. And figuring out which distributors actually move product versus which ones just warehouse it and collect fees? Those are expensive lessons that take years to learn.
This is exactly why food sales and marketing services exist. The right partner brings decades of relationships you couldn’t build on your own if you tried. They’ve already made the mistakes and learned from them. They know which doors actually open and which ones will never budge no matter how hard you knock.
But pick the wrong agency? You’re worse off than before. Years lost. Money gone. Relationships you thought you had that evaporate overnight when someone retires or gets promoted.
Let’s talk about how this really works.
What These Agencies Actually Do (And What They Don’t)
Forget advertising agencies. That’s a different category entirely. Not what we’re discussing here.
A national food sales and marketing agency handles the business side of getting products sold. The operational work that actually moves the needle. Distributor relationships. Broker networks. The behind-the-scenes grind that puts your products where buyers can find them.
Some only touch retail. Others work exclusively in foodservice. A small handful manage to do both effectively.
The good ones? They build broker networks specifically around your products and category. They manage those brokers so you’re not spending your weekends chasing down people who won’t return calls. They’ve already built relationships with distributors that took years of consistent performance to develop. And they provide real data—actual numbers you can use to make decisions, not fluff reports designed to make everything look rosy.
Most importantly, they take cost out of the system. They’re not just another expense sitting on your P&L. They replace infrastructure you’d otherwise have to build yourself, except they do it faster and usually cheaper because they’ve already paid the tuition on all the hard lessons.
Here’s Where Manufacturers Get Burned
Not all agencies play by the same rulebook. This is where manufacturers run into trouble.
Most traditional brokers own everything. The customer relationships. The sales data. All the leverage. You’re along for the ride until suddenly you’re not. They can drop your brand at their discretion, and every single connection they built? Gone overnight. Just like that. Starting over from scratch.
That’s a terrible position to be in. Your business dependent on someone else’s goodwill.
There’s another way to structure this. Some agencies operate as a managed service provider for the food industry. Sounds like corporate jargon, but here’s what it actually means:
They build and run your broker network. They do all the heavy lifting—recruiting, training, managing, firing when needed. But you hold the contracts. Every single one has your company’s name on it. You decide who stays and who goes. The manufacturer makes the final call. Always.
Why does this matter? Because if things ever change—if you outgrow them, if they get acquired by someone you don’t like, if a key person retires—your network stays yours. You’re not rebuilding from zero while competitors gain ground.
One model leaves you completely exposed. The other protects your business long-term. That’s really what the choice comes down to.
Foodservice and Retail Are Completely Different Animals
Two main paths exist in this world. Restaurants and institutions. Or grocery stores and retailers. Plenty of brands work both channels. But be clear-eyed about the differences—they require totally separate approaches and skill sets.
National foodservice brokerage covers restaurants, hotels, hospitals, school cafeterias, corporate dining rooms, stadiums. Volume can be enormous. A single chain account might move more product in a month than some retailers do in a year. But buyers care about things home consumers never think about. Does it perform in a commercial kitchen running 200 covers on a Saturday night? Does it save labor costs? Can they get it consistently, week after week, without shortages disrupting their menu?
The U.S. foodservice distribution market represents roughly $370 billion annually, according to Morningstar’s industry analysis—highly fragmented with the three largest distributors (Sysco, US Foods, and Performance Food Group) controlling only about 35% of the market combined. That fragmentation means opportunity, but also complexity. The foodservice business in the United States must be built market by market—there’s no shortcut around this reality. A solid foodservice brokerage network gets you meetings with Sysco, US Foods, regional distributors, specialty houses serving niche markets. Without those relationships? Invisible. You simply don’t exist to the buyers who matter.
National retail food brokerage is a completely different challenge. Grocery stores. Natural food markets. Big box retailers. Club stores. Shelf space is fiercely competitive. Everyone wants in. Buyers hold all the cards and they know it.
Retail brokerage helps with category management, promotional calendars, and the relationships that frankly take forever to build when you’re starting cold. Unlike foodservice where you organize by geography, retail often requires organizing by account responsibility—different brokers specializing in different retail chains. It also creates brand recognition with consumers—recognition that can actually help your foodservice business down the road.
Here’s something most people miss: agencies claiming they do both channels often do neither particularly well. The skills don’t transfer cleanly. The relationships exist in separate universes. You want dedicated people focused on each channel, not generalists spreading themselves so thin nothing gets done properly.
What Separates Great Agencies From The Mediocre Ones
Anyone can promise results on a PowerPoint presentation. Here’s what actually separates effective agencies from the rest.
Great agencies don’t shove you into their existing broker network alongside everyone else. That one-size-fits-all approach treats your artisan hot sauce the same as commodity products—and buyers notice. Instead, they recruit brokers specifically matched to your products and category. Your specialty cheese needs completely different people than your frozen appetizers. Market by market, they find the right fit rather than forcing mismatched partnerships.
They’ve already invested years building headquarters relationships with major distributors. Getting approved by Sysco at the corporate level? That requires years of consistent performance and trust that most newcomers simply don’t have. Sysco alone generated $81.4 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025 and serves approximately 730,000 customer locations according to their 2025 Annual Report—the scale of these operations means established agencies walk into those meetings with credibility you’d spend a decade earning on your own.
And reporting. This matters way more than most manufacturers realize when they’re starting out. You need uniform data across every single market. What’s actually selling. What’s sitting. Why certain regions perform and others lag. Without that visibility, you’re just guessing. Good agencies provide measurement and accountability systems that mean something—not vanity metrics designed to justify their fees.
Red Flags and Hard Lessons
We’ve watched manufacturers make the same painful mistakes repeatedly over the years.
Chasing the cheapest option. This rarely works out well. Low fees typically mean low effort, minimal attention, and brokers who put your line last on every call list. You get what you pay for. Calculate total value—including opportunity cost of slow growth—not just what hits your bank account each month.
Sprinting to national distribution before proving anything regionally. This approach often fails. Build proof points first. Show you can win somewhere specific before trying to conquer everywhere simultaneously. Spreading resources across 50 states when you haven’t figured out five leads to mediocrity everywhere.
Accepting “trust us” instead of real data. If they won’t show you actual sales numbers, something’s wrong. Full stop. Walk away. Transparency shouldn’t be negotiable.
And the biggest one: signing contracts where the agency owns your broker relationships. This creates dependency that can create serious problems down the road. Industry consolidation among brokers has accelerated in recent years—as Presenture documented in their analysis of broker consolidation trends, even the major distributors are constantly jockeying for position and acquiring competitors. The Food Institute continues to track these shifts. When your agency gets acquired or your broker network consolidates, you need to be holding the contracts, not wondering what happens next. Keep those contracts in your company’s name. Always.
Questions People Actually Ask
What does a food sales and marketing agency even do?
How's that different from a regular food broker?
What's this managed service provider thing mean?
Why not just build my own sales team?
How do I know if an agency is actually legit?
What should be in the contract?
What's this actually cost?
How long until we see real results?
Can smaller brands even use agencies like this?
What's the single biggest mistake manufacturers make?
How do agencies actually handle multiple geographic markets?
What are headquarters relationships and why do they matter?
Should I go regional first or try to jump national?
Foodservice or retail—which one is easier?
How do I know if we're actually a good fit with an agency?
What if I've already got some brokers working for me?
Do agencies help with actual marketing too?
How involved do I actually need to be?
What happens if the relationship doesn't work out?
Where This All Leads
Food manufacturers face real obstacles when trying to take products national. Building everything internally takes years of grinding work and serious capital that most companies simply don’t have available.
The right food sales and marketing agency changes the math completely. Decades of relationships, ready to deploy for your brand. Know-how accumulated from launching hundreds of products. Infrastructure that would take you forever to replicate yourself.
For manufacturers seeking imaginative ways to pivot their sales and marketing initiatives, the managed service provider model offers something genuinely valuable: national distribution capability without surrendering control of your future. It takes cost out of the system while protecting your business long-term.
Presenture operates exactly this way. Roots going back to 1988 when founder Michael O. Maher started Maher Marketing Services. In 1990, the company began developing headquarters supplier relationships with Sysco Corporation—relationships that continue today. The current organization launched in 2009 and has grown into a comprehensive manufacturing solutions provider.
Today, Presenture manages over $300 million in annual sales across twenty manufacturer clients. Three of those client relationships have lasted continuously for over thirty years—longer than many marriages.
Dedicated foodservice and retail teams that don’t overlap in addition to a vice president of marketing and sales specialists handling the details. Uniform reporting across sixty-five markets so nothing falls through cracks. Over thirty broker organizations managed per client. Every broker recruited specifically for each manufacturer’s needs. All contracts held directly with the manufacturers themselves.
Long-term security. Genuine partnership. The manufacturer always maintains final say.
If you’re curious about what’s possible for your brand, contact Presenture and start a conversation. It begins with understanding your specific goals and figuring out whether there’s genuine fit. Because good partnerships start with honest alignment—not sales pitches.