# Shelf checks for small brands with field reps

Shelf checks for small brands with field reps is a SaaS idea for sales managers at small food, drink and household brands with field reps, priced to test at $19 per rep a month. Reps visit shops and send shelf photos by chat, mixed in with everything else. With it, field reps for small food and drink brands record shelf photos, stock gaps and prices in each shop on their phone.

_Published 19 Oct 2026. A starting point we wrote, not market research: run the 7-day test before you build._

## What problem does it solve?

Reps visit shops and send shelf photos by chat, mixed in with everything else. Head office can’t see which stores were visited, what was out of stock, or what got fixed.

**Why now:** Shops give small brands little time to prove themselves, so a gap on the shelf can cost the listing.

## What do they use today?

Most small brands ask reps to send photos and a few lines after each visit, and a manager copies the useful bits into a spreadsheet. Missed stores and stock gaps are noticed late, if at all.

## How does it work?

A rep opens the week’s visit plan on their phone and works through the stores on the list. In each shop they complete the checklist with shelf photos, prices and any stock gaps, and an out-of-stock flag goes to head office. The visit is saved to that store’s history, and the sales manager gets a weekly email summing up visits made and problems found.

## What goes in the first version?

- Store list and weekly visit plan per rep
- Visit checklist with shelf photos, prices and stock gaps
- Out-of-stock flags sent to head office
- Visit history and photos for each store
- Weekly summary email of visits and problems

## Who pays, and how much?

- **Who pays:** Sales managers at small food, drink and household brands with field reps
- **Price to test:** $19 per rep a month

Pricing per rep follows the people out visiting shops, so a small field team pays a small bill. Managers already count costs per rep, such as phone and travel, so it is easy to explain.

## How to test it in 7 days

1. Ask five sales managers at small brands how they know reps visited and what they found.
2. Ask in food and drink founder groups on LinkedIn how they track shelf checks today.
3. Give one brand’s reps a shared form for a week and review the results with their manager.

## Where to find the first customers

- Food and drink founder communities on LinkedIn
- Trade associations for independent food and drink producers
- Sales agencies that represent small brands in shops

## What are the risks?

- Merchandising suites are built for big brands; keep it cheap and simple for small teams.
- Some shops forbid photos, so reps need a quick way to log without them.

## How to build it on shipanysaas

5 of the parts it needs are already in the kit, the phone app with the All-in plan. Get the kit, open it in Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, and paste the starting prompt.

**Already in the kit:** Teams and roles, Billing, Emails, In-app notifications, Phone app with All-in

**You build:**

- Store list and visit plans
- Visit checklist with photos and flags
- Weekly summary and store history

[Get the kit](https://www.shipanysaas.com/pricing)

### The starting prompt

```text
You are in a fresh copy of the shipanysaas starter kit, a pnpm and Turborepo monorepo: the Next.js web app is in apps/web and the Supabase database, with its migrations, in apps/web/supabase; with the All-in plan, the Expo phone app is in apps/native. Help me build the first version of Shelf checks for small brands with field reps.

Read AGENTS.md first, then the AGENTS.md in every folder you work in: the kit's rules there win over your defaults. When a skill in .agents/skills (also in .claude/skills and .cursor/skills) matches a task, use it.

## The product
- What it does: Field reps for small food and drink brands record shelf photos, stock gaps and prices in each shop on their phone.
- Who pays: Sales managers at small food, drink and household brands with field reps
- Their problem: Reps visit shops and send shelf photos by chat, mixed in with everything else. Head office can’t see which stores were visited, what was out of stock, or what got fixed.
- Price to test: $19 per rep a month (a plan in apps/web/config/billing.config.ts)

## Build only this first version
1. Store list and weekly visit plan per rep
2. Visit checklist with shelf photos, prices and stock gaps
3. Out-of-stock flags sent to head office
4. Visit history and photos for each store
5. Weekly summary email of visits and problems

## Already in the kit: reuse it, never rebuild it
- Teams and roles: team accounts with members, roles and invitations
- Billing: Stripe or Lemon Squeezy subscriptions, per seat or usage-based, and one-off payments
- Emails: transactional email through Resend or Nodemailer
- In-app notifications: a notifications bell in the web app
- Phone app: an iPhone, iPad and Android app on the same backend (All-in plan)

## New code it needs
- Store list and visit plans
- Visit checklist with photos and flags
- Weekly summary and store history

## How to work
1. Plan first: list the database tables (with row-level security, so each team only sees its own rows), the pages and the server actions for the first feature. Then stop and wait for my OK.
2. Build one feature at a time with the kit's own UI and form components, with a migration for every schema change and user-facing text in the translation files.
3. After each feature, run the verification steps in AGENTS.md, fix what they find, and tell me what you built and what comes next.

## Rules
- Ask me before you add a dependency, delete a file, or change sign-in, billing or the admin panel.
- Leave the parts of the kit this product doesn't use as they are.
- If apps/native is not in your copy (the Starter plan), build the web app only.

Done when every first-version feature works for a signed-in team and the AGENTS.md checks pass.
```

### Guides for the parts it uses

- [Expo Supabase setup: one backend for your web and phone apps](https://www.shipanysaas.com/blog/expo-supabase-one-backend)
- [How to add in-app notifications to a Next.js + Supabase app](https://www.shipanysaas.com/blog/nextjs-supabase-in-app-notifications)
- [How to add Resend email to a Next.js + Supabase app](https://www.shipanysaas.com/blog/nextjs-supabase-resend-email)

## More ideas: Phone-first

- [Visit reports for pet-sitting businesses](https://www.shipanysaas.com/saas-ideas/pet-sitter-visit-reports): Sitters send owners a photo report after every visit, and the business keeps a record of every walk and feed.
- [Damage check-in for small vehicle rental fleets](https://www.shipanysaas.com/saas-ideas/rental-vehicle-damage-checks): Staff photograph each vehicle at pickup and return from set angles, and both sides sign, so damage disputes come with evidence.
- [Volunteer shifts for clubs and charities](https://www.shipanysaas.com/saas-ideas/volunteer-shift-sign-ups): Volunteers sign up for shifts on their phone and get reminders, and organisers see the gaps before the day.

- [All SaaS ideas](https://www.shipanysaas.com/saas-ideas)
- [Try the free generator](https://www.shipanysaas.com/saas-ideas#generator)