Postmortems
Have you done your Q4 2025 postmortem yet?
We have been sharing our SKUFood trends for 2026. We hope you find them helpful in your business to focus your resources where they are most effective. This week we will get back to the sales theme we had started in Q4. Your sales department should be contributing so much to your business. You have heard me say before…
“Success in this industry is not just about producing a great product to sell; it is about selling the great product you produce.”
One task your sales people should be completing is a postmortem after each key selling season. Q4 is an important time in the food and beverage industry. Consumers have a different mindset and they spend money differently. Many items are impacted by sales in this key selling period. You should learn from what worked and what didn’t work. The best time to complete a postmortem is as soon as you have the information to get the work done.
November and December are critical months in food retail. The stores are full of product and the sales and sell thru impact the retailers’ ability to deliver overall results. There is another level to winning the sales battle over the holidays. There is so much work put into building a great plan and executing at this time of year, the morale within the stores and the office really is impacted by holiday sales. Suppliers should understand this. Although you can’t change what happened in 2025, you should start planning for the 2026 holidays now. This is the best time to do a postmortem while it is fresh in your mind.
If you item movement does not change much in Q4 you can still use these processes during your key selling periods.
Postmortems take your game to the next level
Why they are so important
There are a number of reasons to do a post mortem:
1. Assess your performance
2. Determine what worked really well
3. Determine what you need to change
4. Determine what you would like to see your customers change
5. Demonstrate to your customer that want to make this as successful as possible for both parties
Where to start
The best place to start your postmortem is with two things; your 2024 results and your 2025 plan. The actual results from the previous year are most important because they are facts and it is also how the retailers will be judged. We suggest you look at your item sales from the beginning of November through to the end of December. Depending on the lead times for items and shipping your shipments into retailer might be earlier than this. Ultimately, you want to understand what moved through the stores during these 8-9 weeks.
Set up three columns on your spreadsheet:
2024 actual 2025 plan 2025 actual
Review your item sales in each of these columns to assess the season. You can add % variances if it helps you assess the performance.
What went well?
Once you have an idea of the sales numbers you need to review the quantitative and qualitative positives from the season. The sales are critical but there are other important factors. Perhaps you had a production issue, but you were proactive and called the category manager. They worked with supply chain to get the product into and out of the warehouse quickly, so it hit the stores on time. This is just as important as a sales increase. It speaks volumes to your relationship with your customers.
You should include any notes and photos from store visits. If your new packaging looked great in the store or the department managers you talked to said consumers were talking about your product great-include these valuable insights.
What do you need to change?
We can always improve. Where are the gaps for your business that you see from the sales results and other observations? Perhaps your competitor introduced a product that impacted your sales or the expensive shipper you invested in never made it to the floor. Make sure you include solutions, not just the problems.
What would you like to see your customers do differently?
You don’t control the retailer but if you can demonstrate that a different action on their part would benefit you both then it should be in your postmortem. Often retailers do things without understanding the impact on suppliers. The impact of a late PO or an ad that gets printed wrong can be a huge issue.
Build your plan for 2026
Take the information you have been compiling and build a quick plan for 2026. It is a long way off, but you need to start somewhere, and the best time is while all of this is fresh. Plan the sales and make note of what you would like to see happen again, what you would change and what you would like to see your customer change.
Share your postmortem
Category managers are busy and they don’t always do the things they should. Completing a holiday postmortem could be one of those things. I encourage you to share your postmortem with the category manager. They might not even respond but they will see it and they will understand you take the holiday selling period as seriously as they do. When you do have a meeting to plan 2026 you already the groundwork in place. Now is the time to pull the information together and get ready for the end of 2026.
I do have travel coming up to Toronto, Edmonton and Guelph so if you want to connect or have an event in any of these locations give me a call or send me an email.
Peter
SKUFood Recipes for Success Podcast
In this episode of SKUFood Recipes for Success, we sit down with Jennifer Frame, a marketing and innovation strategist with more than 18 years of experience across retail, FMCG, luxury, and technology in both Canada and Europe.
Originally from Nova Scotia and now based in Geneva, Switzerland, Jennifer has built a career helping brands sharpen their positioning, clarify their growth strategy, and expand with confidence. Her experience spans global leaders like Procter & Gamble and Manor AG, as well as high-growth startups, giving her a unique perspective on what it truly takes to scale across markets.
As Co-Founder of Seajai Collective, Jennifer now helps Canadian companies enter the European market while supporting European businesses in expanding internationally. Her work focuses on strengthening brand, marketing, and commercial fundamentals before chasing growth. In our conversation, we explore what brands often overlook when entering new regions, the cultural and commercial nuances of European markets, and why successful expansion starts with strategic clarity, not just ambition.
This episode is a must-listen for founders and food brands considering export, international partnerships, or scaling beyond their home market — and for anyone who believes growth should be intentional, strategic, and built to last.
If you would like to be a guest send us a note. We are always working on the upcoming episodes.
More challenges with pricing from war in Middle East
It has been tough enough to keep prices from going up. Now we see gas prices rising at an alarming rate. The impact will be immediate on logistics costs as fuel surcharges are changed. One challenge is we really do not know how long this will continue. There seemed to be signs of a reprieve this week then oil went back up.
If there are any options such as sharing trucks with other suppliers or reducing the number of deliveries to get more per pallet or per load you should explore these options.
With the focus on Canadian food and beverage we wanted to share a program we have developed with Alain Bosse, the Kilted Chef. We partner to share insights about Canadian food and beverage at conferences and events. We talk about where products come from, share insights about some hidden gems and of course Chef Alain has great tips for using the products at home. This is designed to be entertaining and engaging. Not just for food industry audiences, it works for everyone.