Built for your category
Deduction recovery for food brands
Perishable and shelf-stable food brands take shortage, spoilage and fill-rate hits through KeHE, UNFI and grocery — often on thin margins. This is built to get that money back.
Mihir Naik · Founder, OverDeduct — deduction recovery for emerging & mid-market CPG brands
Last reviewed: August 4, 2026
Educational content — not legal, tax, or accounting advice. Verify deadlines and fee details against your current distributor agreement before disputing.
Why deductions hit food brands
Food is a code-date, cold-chain, high-velocity category, and every one of those traits creates deductions. Shortages at receiving, spoilage and unsaleables on perishable SKUs, and fill-rate penalties when a case doesn't ship all stack onto already-thin food margins. Most of it gets written off because a lean food brand has no one to reconcile it before the window closes.
The deductions that bite food brands hardest
Shortages & OS&D
High order velocity and multi-DC distribution mean receiving discrepancies are constant — and they're the most recoverable deduction when you can produce the delivery paperwork.
Learn more →Spoilage, swell & unsaleables
Perishable and code-dated food draws spoilage allowances and unsaleables claims; the recoverable part is anything charged beyond the agreed allowance or taken twice.
Learn more →Fill-rate penalties
Grocery and distributor fill-rate programs charge a fee when a case ships short — recoverable when the order was cut or amended after the fact.
Learn more →How recovery works for food brands
- See it for free. Upload a remittance and get a categorized, recoverable-dollar estimate in seconds — no signup, and your file never leaves your browser.
- Dispute it yourself. Self-serve software drafts the disputes and tracks every filing deadline for a low monthly fee.
- Or hand it off. We file on contingency — you only pay a share of what we recover, and nothing if we recover nothing.
See pricing for the full picture, or read how it works.
Recover what's yours
See what your distributors owe you — free
Upload a remittance from KeHE, UNFI, or any retailer and get a categorized, recoverable-dollar estimate in seconds. Free, no signup — your file never leaves your browser.
Analyze a remittance →Frequently asked questions
Which deductions hit food brands hardest?
Shortages, spoilage/unsaleables, and fill-rate penalties. Food's code dates and cold-chain handling drive spoilage claims, while high order velocity through KeHE and UNFI drives shortages and fill-rate fees on thin margins.
Are spoilage deductions on food recoverable?
Often partially. Spoilage within an agreed allowance is usually valid, but anything charged above the allowance percentage, undocumented, or taken twice (allowance plus itemized claim) is recoverable.
How do I start if I sell through KeHE or UNFI?
Upload a recent remittance to the free analyzer. It categorizes every deduction — shortage, spoilage, fill-rate — and estimates what's recoverable, with no signup and the file never leaving your browser.
Related
Built for other categories
- Beverage brandsBeverage is heavy, high-cube and breakable — which makes freight, breakage and slotting deductions a structural cost. Here's how to get the invalid share back.
- Supplement brandsSupplements carry high margins and heavy promotional and compliance activity — so every invalid deduction costs more and there are more of them. This is built to recover it.
- Natural & organic brandsNatural and organic brands are native to the KeHE and UNFI channel — exactly the distributor lane where deductions run heaviest and specialist tools are scarcest.
- Mid-market CPGAt mid-market scale, deductions are a managed line item, not a surprise — you need DDO visibility, clean reserves, and a repeatable recovery process, not just a one-off audit.
- Emerging CPG brandsBuilt for a lean team without a deductions analyst.