The Natural Channel Playbook: How to Win at UNFI, KeHE, and Natural Grocery
Most CPG founders rush into conventional grocery before proving themselves in natural. Here's the playbook Jeff Church used to win the natural channel first.
In May 2012, I was having dinner at Jimbo's Natural Foods in San Diego with a woman named Jessica Pratt. Jessica was a natural channel broker... one of the best in the business, actually. I'd worked with her on Nika Water and trusted her instincts completely.
I casually mentioned this new cold-pressed juice company I was building with James Brennan and a couple of young guys named Eric Ethans and Bryan Riblett. Jessica's eyes went wide. She and her husband had been making green juice at home every single morning. "Jeff," she said, "if this is what I think it is, you need to talk to Whole Foods right now."
Three weeks later, we were in front of Diane Snyder and Chris Giuliani at Whole Foods. Four months after that, we launched in 50 Whole Foods stores in Southern California.
That dinner at Jimbo's... that was the natural channel working exactly as it should.
But here's what most founders get wrong. They think getting into UNFI or KeHE is the destination. It's not. It's the beginning of a long journey that only works if you understand the rules.
The Natural Channel Is Not a Sales Channel. It's a Proving Ground.
The natural channel... meaning Whole Foods, natural independent grocers, UNFI, KeHE, and regional chains like Sprouts, Natural Grocers, and Earth Fare... exists for one specific purpose in the life of a CPG brand: validation.
When Suja launched in Whole Foods Southern California in September 2012, the goal wasn't revenue. The goal was proof. If health-conscious, early-adopting consumers who shop at Whole Foods buy your product, buy it again, and tell their friends... you have something. If they don't... you have an expensive science experiment.
"Do not evaluate Whole Foods purely by traditional profit and loss metrics. It is also a marketing platform." I've said that to founders a hundred times. It's still true.
A $50 per store per week velocity at Whole Foods means something entirely different than $50 per store per week at Kroger. At Whole Foods, those are trend-seekers, wellness addicts, and early adopters. They're your brand's first missionaries. At Kroger, they're mostly deal shoppers. Both matter eventually. But sequence matters more than either one.
UNFI vs. KeHE: What's the Difference and Why Does It Matter
There are two big distributors in the natural channel. UNFI (United Natural Foods, Inc.) and KeHE. Both serve natural grocery accounts at scale. Both are critical infrastructure for any emerging brand trying to grow.
Here's the simple breakdown.
UNFI is the larger of the two and services Whole Foods almost exclusively at the national level. If you want to be in Whole Foods across regions... you need to be set up in UNFI. Full stop. KeHE tends to service more of the independent natural retailers and regional chains like Sprouts and Earth Fare.
Most brands need both eventually. But in the early days, where you start depends entirely on where your first retail champion lives.
The relationship with your distributor is also different than founders expect. Getting on the UNFI price list doesn't mean UNFI is out selling your product. They're not. They're order fulfillment. You create the demand. They fulfill it. Confusing these two things is one of the most common and costly mistakes I see.
This is where a good natural channel broker becomes worth their commission many times over.
The Broker Relationship That Changes Everything
Jessica Pratt didn't just introduce us to Whole Foods buyers. She vouched for us. In the natural channel, that's the currency.
Bill Weiland at Presence Marketing was another one of those kingmakers... a man who'd been in the natural space for decades, who understood the ecosystem better than almost anyone, and who was genuinely selective about which brands he championed. Bill represented Suja in our early growth phase. Having Bill in your corner with a Whole Foods buyer was completely different than walking in cold with a deck.
Natural channel brokers typically take about 5% commission. For a stage-one brand, that feels expensive. But here's the math: a good broker with real retailer relationships can compress a 12-month buyer process into 6 weeks. They also keep you from making rookie mistakes that permanently damage relationships before they've even started.
The question isn't "should I use a broker?" The question is "do I have access to the right broker for my account targets?"
A connected broker in the natural channel is often a prerequisite, not an accessory. And a mediocre broker with weak retailer relationships is worse than no broker at all... they'll cost you money and credibility simultaneously.
Expo West: What It Really Does
Every March in Anaheim, the natural products industry descends on the Anaheim Convention Center for Expo West. It's the largest natural products trade show in the country... 70,000-plus attendees, 3,000-plus brands, hundreds of buyers roaming the floor.
Founders go to Expo West for two reasons. The right reason and the wrong reason.
The wrong reason: to get discovered. To stand at a booth and hope a Whole Foods buyer wanders by and falls in love with your product. That happens occasionally. But hope is not a strategy.
The right reason: to strengthen existing relationships, make targeted new introductions through your broker network and mutual connections, benchmark your packaging and positioning against the competitive set, and get smarter about where the category is heading before you finalize your next year's roadmap.
Expo West works when you already have something to build on... a retail win, a broker with credibility, a story that lands in a crowded room. For stage-one brands with no sales, it's expensive exposure and mostly noise. For stage-two brands with proof of concept, it's essential.
On the investment: booth space, travel, sampling, and setup will run you anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000-plus depending on how you approach it. Budget accordingly or don't go. A half-hearted booth with weak product samples is worse than not attending. It signals to buyers that you don't take your own brand seriously.
The Biggest Trap in the Natural Channel
Here it is. The mistake I see founders make more than any other.
They get set up with UNFI or KeHE... they get picked up by 200 natural grocery accounts... and they think they've won distribution.
They haven't.
Don't confuse distribution gains with velocity gains. I say this constantly because it's constantly necessary.
Getting into UNFI doesn't mean consumers are buying your product. It means your product is available to be ordered. Those are two completely different things. The natural channel runs on velocity... how fast your product sells off the shelf per store per week... not how many accounts you're technically listed in.
I've watched brands celebrate getting into UNFI's catalog, then get quietly delisted from a dozen accounts six months later because nobody was buying the product off the shelf. The velocity wasn't there. Accounts stopped reordering. UNFI dropped them. The brand had to rebuild a lot of relationships and credibility to recover.
The moment you get any distribution foothold in the natural channel, your only job is velocity. Demos. Shelf placement. Broker accountability. Any digital touchpoints that drive consumers to the actual stores where you're on shelf. The product has to move. Nothing else matters if it doesn't move.
What Success Looks Like Before You Go Conventional
The natural channel is a bridge, not a destination. Here's the sequence I've seen work:
First: Win a regional Whole Foods market area. Southern California, the Southwest, the Southeast... get a geography where buyers know your story and velocity data tells a clean story. You want to be at the 50th percentile or above on velocity versus your category peers. Below that, you don't have leverage. At 80th percentile or above, you can expand off-cycle.
Second: Let that data... pulled from SPINS or Nielsen off Whole Foods POS... become the most powerful slide in your pitch deck. Actual velocity. Real sell-through. This is what serious conventional buyers want to see before they give you shelf space.
Third: Use your natural channel track record to approach the regional chains. Sprouts, Natural Grocers, The Fresh Market. These are natural channel accounts with slightly lower velocity hurdles than Whole Foods, and strong brand builders in their own right.
Fourth: Expand your UNFI and KeHE footprint into independent natural retailers in your core geography. Now you're building ACV (All Commodity Volume) without over-extending into channels that require more support than your team can actually provide.
Only after that... after you have syndicated data showing a clean velocity story and strong repeat purchase rates... do you knock on Kroger's door.
Conventional grocers have no patience for "we're building brand awareness." They want proof. The natural channel gives you that proof in a format buyers can actually evaluate.
The Sequencing Is the Strategy
We launched Suja in 50 Whole Foods stores in Southern California in September 2012. By 2013, we had $18 million in revenue. By 2015, we were in 30,000 retail locations nationwide. That same year, Coca-Cola and Goldman Sachs valued us at $300 million.
None of that happens without the natural channel foundation. Not the Whole Foods launch, not Jessica Pratt's dinner introduction, not Bill Weiland championing our brand with key accounts. Those relationships, in that sequence, built everything that came after.
The natural channel validated us. And validation is what unlocks every door that comes next.
Don't skip it. Don't rush through it. Don't mistake getting listed with a distributor for actually winning at distribution.
Win the natural channel first. Get your velocity data clean. Let the numbers do the talking. Then take that story anywhere you want.
Gross margin determines destiny. And the natural channel... when you work it right... is where the foundation gets built.
Jeff Church is an 8x CPG founder, co-founder of Suja Juice, and has led $700M+ in exits. If you want the full framework for natural channel strategy, distribution sequencing, and everything in between, the CPG MBA program is where we go deep. And if you're ready to build your personal 90-day go-to-market plan with real accountability, the 90-Day Breakthrough is where we do that work together.
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