Do you still need a broker to access major retail chains in the United States? It's the question every manufacturer should be asking themselves today.

There's a belief that persists in many boardrooms of consumer goods companies in Latin America: that to sell to Publix, Key Foods, Walmart, Kroger, or any other major US chain, you absolutely have to go through a broker.

It's one of those inherited truths that no one questions anymore, and it ends up costing margin year after year. After three decades of designing routes to market, I can say this with certainty: the obligation to work with brokers to reach US retail was never contractual, it was functional. And the function that justified the broker has changed so much in recent years that it's advisable to review the entire model before signing the next commission renewal.

The short answer: no, you are not required to hire a retail broker to sell in the United States

No major retail chain in the United States legally or contractually requires a manufacturer to work through a broker. Direct access exists and is formalized. Walmart receives suppliers through Retail Link and its Supplier Center. Kroger does so through its Supplier Hub. These portals are now the actual entry point, and they operate with a logic of data and compliance, not contacts.

The process itself makes this clear. At Walmart, a manufacturer can self-register online as a supplier, although this registration doesn't guarantee business: they remain in a queue for buyers to review, and if the product is of interest, an invitation is sent to initiate the agreement. At Kroger, the process begins with the DUNS number as the primary identifier and profile creation in the Supplier Hub before moving on to product and payment configuration. At no point in these processes is a broker listed as a requirement.

So if the question is strictly "am I obligated?", the answer is no. But that was never the right question.

What made the broker indispensable, and what changed?

The traditional broker solved three problems that the manufacturer, especially the medium-sized one or the one that was just entering, could not solve alone.

1. The relationship with the chain's buyer, which was a personal asset built over years.

2. Category intelligence, that fine knowledge of what each retailer wanted and how to present it to them.

3. Point-of-sale execution, that is, restocking, merchandising, display management, and resolving issues on the sales floor. The broker was, essentially, the bridge between the producer and the shelf.

Two forces eroded that bridge.

The first is the digitization of buyer access. Today, buyers at large chains use platforms and algorithms to match their purchasing needs with verified suppliers, analyzing product data, certifications, and compliance. This changes the nature of access. It's no longer about someone with the right connections opening a door, but about having clean data, up-to-date certifications, and operational compliance in place from day one. Access has shifted from a relationship issue to a data and compliance issue. Those who have their house in order get in. Those who don't, don't get in, not even with the best broker.

The second driving force is the rise of direct-to-consumer and retail media. For years, traditional channels like supermarkets and pharmacies dominated mass-market sales, but recent growth has been fueled by the direct-to-consumer model, which eliminates intermediaries. A brand that has already demonstrated traction in its own channel reaches the chain's buyer with a proven track record of demand, not by asking for a favor. This shifts negotiating power to the manufacturer and reduces dependence on the intermediary, who was previously the only way to demonstrate market interest.

The broker didn't disappear, it mutated in the United States

Here's the nuance many management teams overlook. The broker didn't die. It changed its role. For consumer brands, brokers still function as partners, providing immediate access to established retail relationships, regional distribution networks, and operational capabilities that would take years to build independently. The difference is that the brokerage industry has gone digital. Advanced platforms offer real-time sales visibility, and artificial intelligence enables demand forecasting, inventory optimization, and promotional planning. The broker has moved beyond being a relationship-based salesperson and has become, at best, a technology-driven execution partner.

It's important to clarify the most common and costly structural error in the US consumer goods industry: confusing the broker with the distributor. They are not the same and don't solve the same problem. The distributor is a logistics and fulfillment partner. They buy the product from you, store it, and deliver it to their network accounts, assuming the financial risk of holding your inventory in the meantime. The broker, on the other hand, represents sales and handles commercial execution. Mixing both roles in the same contract, with overlapping expectations, is a recipe for blaming the wrong partner when something goes wrong. These are two distinct go-to-market decisions and must be made separately.

The decision-making framework: account by account, not general policy.

What a manufacturer should question is not whether to modernize the model, but rather what criteria to use for each individual case. The mistake is treating the broker decision as a company-wide policy. The correct decision is made based on account type and geography.

It's advisable to go direct when the brand has sufficient scale to support its own key account team, when it already has demonstrable traction that gives it real negotiating power with the buyer, and when the volume per account justifies the fixed cost of having that internal headcount. Large national accounts managed from a single point of contact at headquarters, such as a Walmart in Bentonville or a Kroger in Cincinnati, are usually best managed directly because the relationship is singular, extremely valuable, and it doesn't make sense to pay a recurring commission on a relationship that your own team can and should maintain.

It's advisable to maintain or incorporate a broker when discussing regional expansion or fragmented accounts where building in-house coverage would take years and capital that isn't currently justified, when the brand is new and doesn't yet have the necessary relationship strength or track record, or when in-house execution in geographically dispersed markets isn't cost-effective to implement internally. The classic industry recommendation remains valid: start regionally before expanding nationally, and rigorously measure distribution profits and inventory turnover per point of sale before scaling up investment.

The modern model, in practice, is almost never pure. It's hybrid. Strategic national accounts are handled directly by an in-house team, while a broker or agency is used for the long tail of regional accounts and for retail execution where it's not profitable to have in-house staff.

Modernizing the RTM model doesn't mean eliminating the broker. It means ceasing to use them as an access crutch, now that access is digitized, and starting to use them as a variable execution capability, activated only where the cost of doing it internally isn't justified.

The question that would leave on the board table

The fundamental question isn't "Should we continue using brokers?" It's a more uncomfortable yet more useful one: what part of our market access still depends on relationships that are already digitized, and how much commission are we paying for something the retailer's portal already handles for us?

If a broker takes a percentage on accounts where access is already direct through the Supplier Hub, and where the buyer relationship is handled by your own account manager, you're unknowingly giving away margin. But the opposite risk is just as real. If you eliminate the broker in markets where you don't have your own execution capability, you lose shelf presence and discipline, which is precisely what the analytical consumer of 2026 will punish mercilessly. Undemonstrated value at the point of sale is penalized, and a poorly stocked shelf is undemonstrated value.

Modernizing the route to market in the United States isn't a matter of fashion or simply cutting intermediaries on principle. It's a matter of precision. It's about knowing exactly where the intermediary adds capacity you don't have, and where they only add cost to capacity the system already provides. That distinction, made account by account, is what separates companies that protect their margins from those that silently erode them.

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At TMC Business Consultants, we design and optimize Route to Market strategies, channel management, and broker and distributor relationships for consumer goods manufacturers in the United States, Latin America, and Spain. If you want to evaluate which parts of your retail access model are adding value and which are only adding costs, let's talk.