Pet Food Distribution in Nepal: Few Shops, Loyal Buyers, Heavy Bags

Pet food in Nepal is a young, city-centred category. Sales tend to concentrate in a limited number of pet shops and veterinary clinics in larger cities such as Kathmandu Valley and Pokhara, with agrovets and supermarkets carrying some lines. The buyers are loyal: a dog owner who has settled on one brand and one bag size will come back every few weeks for exactly that. If the shop does not have it, they do not switch flavours; they switch shops, or brands. That makes pet food a trade where every outlet is close to a key account, every stock-out is expensive, and the bags are heavy enough that delivery needs real planning. This guide is shaped around those three facts.

A small market where every shop counts

Consider the arithmetic. A hypothetical distributor serving 40 pet shops and clinics might find that 10 of them bring in more than half the value. Losing one of those 10, through a stock-out, a damage dispute or a late payment argument, is like losing a whole route in a biscuit business.

That changes the sales model compared to mass FMCG:

	Mass FMCG beat	Pet food distribution
Outlets per officer	Many, small orders	Few, larger orders
Visit purpose	Take the order, check display	Review the account: stock, movers, next order
Stock-out cost	One lost sale	A lost repeat customer
Credit exposure	Spread thin	Concentrated in a few accounts
Product knowledge	Light	Owners ask about ingredients, ages and diets

The one-page account plan

For each of your top accounts, keep a short plan and review it before each visit cycle. A simple template:

• Account: name, type (pet shop, clinic, agrovet, supermarket), area.
• Core lines they must never run out of: brand, flavour, bag size.
• What sells slowly here: lines to rotate out or stop sending.
• Competing brands they push: from the last visit.
• Credit: current balance and the oldest unpaid invoice.
• Next action: one thing to agree on this visit, with a date.

In gamitrack, most of this lives in the account itself. Visits record closing stock and market notes, including competing brands. Internal notes on the business hold context such as the owner's preferences and are never visible to dealers. Follow-ups let the officer promise an action by a date. The party ledger and aging show the balance and the oldest invoice. Before the visit, the officer reads the account; after the visit, the notes update it.

Routes are smaller in this trade, often one area visited weekly or fortnightly. Each visit is verified with GPS inside the shop's geofence and a photo, and visits outside the geofence, very short or without a photo are flagged for the manager.

Core lines and special diets

Not every SKU deserves the same stock policy. Each brand, flavour and pack size is its own SKU in gamitrack, so you can treat them differently.

Segment	Examples	Stock policy
Core	Best-selling dry food in popular bag sizes	Always in stock at every branch; low-stock levels set; weekly review
Secondary	Other flavours and sizes, wet food	Moderate stock; monthly review
Special diets	Prescription, puppy or senior formulas	Small quantities, often for clinics; order on request
Treats and accessories	Chews, toys, bowls	Low volume, impulse; keep it simple

Set low-stock levels on core SKUs at each branch so you reorder before a shop calls asking where the stock is. Receive stock into batches with expiry dates. Once a month, list near-date batches and slow lines with many weeks of cover, and decide what to do: offer to the shops that sell them fastest, transfer to another branch, or stop reordering.

Heavy bags, torn bags

Large bags of dry food are heavy, and a few of them make a full vehicle quickly. Bags tear on rough handling, and cans dent. Without records, every damaged bag becomes an argument about who pays.

A delivery routine that works:

1. Every product carries a weight in kg, so each order shows its total weight. Plan deliveries by route and day against the vehicle's capacity.
2. Dispatch is all-or-nothing: the order goes in full or waits. If something is short, split the order on purpose rather than sending a partial load nobody records.
3. The assigned delivery person sees the amount due, location and directions in the driver tab.
4. At handover, the driver records proof of delivery with GPS, a photo and the receiver's name. Photograph any torn bag before leaving.
5. If agreed, the driver collects payment after delivery.
6. Damaged items come back as a return with a reason. After review, approved returns go into a branch with a credit note.

Clinics are a different customer

Vet clinics often sell food on the vet's recommendation, particularly special diets. They need reliable supply of a few specific lines, may prefer appointment-style visits, and may have different terms. Give clinics their own party type, their own price list or party override, and a route of their own. Keep pet shops and clinics on separate lists so that a busy shop day does not crowd out the clinic visit.

VAT applies only to lines marked taxable, and invoices print in the IRD format with Bikram Sambat dates; check the current IRD rules with your accountant for how your lines are treated.

Worked month: a 30-account distributor

Suppose a distributor has 30 accounts in Kathmandu Valley and one sub-distributor in Pokhara. A month might run like this:

• Week 1. Officers visit all top 10 accounts with their one-page plans. Visit notes show three shops recorded "no order, has stock" twice in a row, with closing stock showing an older flavour.
• Week 2. The manager changes the plan for those three: offer a smaller bag of a faster flavour and take back nothing. The low-stock alert on a core bag size triggers a reorder.
• Week 3. The weekly collection plan lists two accounts with balances moving past 30 days. Officers collect on their normal visits; payments by Fonepay and bank are allocated to the oldest invoices first.
• Week 4. The Pokhara sub-distributor submits the monthly stock report. Expected closing and actual count differ by a few bags, and the conversation finds a damaged delivery that was never recorded. It goes in as a return.

All details are hypothetical. The point is that a small trade with few accounts benefits from close attention to each one.

Growing beyond one city

When should we appoint a sub-distributor? When the cost of serving a town directly, in travel and delivery, is higher than the margin you would give a local partner. Start with one.

How do we keep visibility once a sub-distributor takes over? Officers can still visit shops and book secondary orders that the sub-distributor fulfils through the dealer app. Monthly dealer stock reports and annual dealer targets by fiscal quarter keep the relationship measurable.

Do officers need signal on visits? Yes for orders, visits and payments. Only the GPS trail is stored without signal and synced later.

Related reading

Veterinary medicine distribution, preventing stock-outs at retailers, delivery and proof of delivery, and the FMCG and packaged food industry page.

Start with one-page plans for your top ten accounts and low-stock levels on your core bags. See pricing for plans, or contact us with questions.