As of November 7, 2026, the clearest test of grocery distribution coverage in Australia sits in the pet aisle: Animals Like Us placed its RawMix33 range into more than 750 Coles supermarkets from October 29, alongside a listing on the grocer's online storefront. The New Zealand manufacturer moved from a distribution base limited to rival Woolworths and the Pet Circle platform to national grocery coverage in a single step. For a brand team, that is not a launch story. It is a shelf availability story, because the difference between 750 doors won and 750 doors selling is decided in the first six weeks of replenishment.
What the Coles deal actually puts on shelf
Two formulations, one bag size
The range enters Coles as a single bag size, one kilogram, across two proteins. That is a deliberately narrow shelf footprint: two facing positions rather than a full range, which keeps the listing cost low and the replenishment cycle simple. It also means the brand has no depth to trade into if one protein underperforms. A shopper who finds the Ocean Fish position empty has no adjacent variant to fall back on, so a single stockout converts directly into a lost basket rather than a substitution.
Why ambient aisles change the economics
Freeze dried and raw blend pet feeds historically required either a dedicated specialty trip or a temperature controlled logistics chain. A shelf stable dry format lets a supermarket stock a high ticket item in an ordinary ambient aisle, without installing floor chillers or training staff on cold handling. That is the operational reason a grocery chain can take share from specialty pet retail at all, and it is why the category is moving into mainstream aisles rather than staying in the freezer cabinet.
The coverage arithmetic behind 750 doors
Two SKUs across 750 doors is 1,500 shelf positions, and that number is the honest size of the opportunity. At a 95 percent on shelf availability rate, roughly 75 positions are empty at any moment. At 85 percent, the figure is 225. The gap between those two rates is not a rounding error, it is the difference between a listing that builds a repeat purchase base and one that trains shoppers to walk past the brand. Distribution coverage measured in doors flatters a launch; on shelf availability measured in positions tells you whether the listing is working.
| Shelf position scenario | Positions stocked | Positions empty | What it means commercially |
|---|---|---|---|
| 750 doors, 2 SKUs, 95 percent availability | 1,425 | 75 | Listing is functioning; fix isolated store level gaps |
| 750 doors, 2 SKUs, 90 percent availability | 1,350 | 150 | Replenishment cycle too slow for the velocity |
| 750 doors, 2 SKUs, 85 percent availability | 1,275 | 225 | Retailer will review range depth at the next category review |
| 750 doors, 1 SKU only in 20 percent of stores | 1,200 | 300 | Planogram compliance failure, not a supply failure |
Where availability breaks first
The supply side is concentrated. RawMix33 relies entirely on animal proteins sourced in New Zealand, so production schedules inherit regional livestock slaughter rates, marine catches and processing plant capacity. Freeze drying is capital intensive and sensitive to moisture removal precision, which leaves little slack when retail volume steps up across 750 stores at once. The risk is not a slow ramp, it is a fast one: a national listing pulls forward orders in the first eight weeks, exactly when the plant has the least flexibility.
A weekly shelf routine that fits a grocery listing
Most brand teams monitor distribution as a quarterly count of doors. A grocery listing at this scale needs a weekly routine instead, built around the positions that can go empty rather than the stores that are listed. The routine below is designed to run on data a brand can actually obtain, store level sales and order data from the retailer plus its own field checks, and it produces one number per week rather than a dashboard.
- Pull store level sales and orders for both SKUs every Monday, and flag any store with zero sales for seven consecutive days.
- Separate the flags into planogram gaps and supply gaps by checking whether the store received stock in the same period.
- Check the two proteins separately, since a shared supply chain can still produce a single formulation stockout.
- Report one number to the retailer: positions stocked divided by positions planned, by state, with the twenty worst stores named.
That single number is what a category manager can act on. It also protects the brand from the most common post launch failure, which is treating a national listing as a completed distribution win while the shelf quietly thins out store by store. The same discipline applies to any brand crossing from specialty into grocery, including beauty lines entering multi door retail with a small SKU set and a wide store count.
FAQ
How many Coles stores carry the range?
More than 750 supermarkets nationally from October 29, 2026, plus the online storefront, in one kilogram bags across two formulations.
What is counted as on shelf availability here?
Shelf positions stocked divided by positions planned, so two SKUs in 750 doors equals 1,500 planned positions rather than 750.
Why measure positions rather than doors?
Because a door can be listed and still be empty in one or both formulations, and an empty position becomes a lost basket with no variant to substitute.
