How to Write a Wholesale Line Sheet for Indie Retail (With Template)

A line sheet is a reference document, not a pitch. The pitch is the cold email or the sample drop — the moment you make the case for why a store should carry your product. The line sheet is what the buyer forwards to their bookkeeper, pins to a clipboard by the register, or pulls up when they're deciding whether to reorder. It answers exactly one question fast: what does this cost, and how do I order it.

Because of that, a line sheet should have almost no persuasive copy on it. Save the story, the founder background, and the flavor description for the pitch email or the sell sheet. The line sheet is specs and terms — the buyer already decided they're interested by the time they ask for one.

Every product line on the sheet needs: product name, size (and UPC if you have one — many indie stores can operate without it, but any store using a barcode scanner at checkout will ask), wholesale price per unit, suggested retail price, case pack (how many units per case), minimum order quantity if it's different from one case, and shelf life. If the product has a meaningful dietary or certification claim — organic, gluten-free, non-GMO, allergen-free — list it in one short line per SKU, not a paragraph.

If you have more than one flavor or size, a simple table works better than separate paragraphs: one row per SKU, one column per field. A buyer scanning a line sheet for the first time should be able to find your wholesale price for a specific SKU in under five seconds.

Below the product table: your brand name, a direct contact (name, email, phone — not a generic info@ inbox if you can help it), lead time (how many days from order to ship or delivery), payment terms (net 30 is standard once you have a track record; many small brands start net-0-on-delivery or a card charge at order time, which is fine to state plainly), and freight terms (do you ship, do you deliver locally, does the buyer arrange pickup).

If you offer a return or bounce policy — for example, replacing damaged product on arrival — state it in one line. Don't leave it implied; buyers remember brands that were upfront about what happens when something goes wrong.

Most new food and drink brands are overthinking the design. A line sheet for a brand with one or two products doesn't need a graphic designer — a clean one-page PDF or even a well-formatted email does the job. Structure: brand name and logo at the top, one line of what the product is (one sentence, not a pitch), the product table (SKU, size, wholesale price, SRP, case pack, shelf life), then contact and terms at the bottom. That's the whole document.

Keep it to one page. A line sheet that runs to page two for a two-SKU brand reads as padded, not thorough.

No suggested retail price. Buyers use SRP to sanity-check their own margin fast — leaving it off just means they email you back and ask, which slows the order down. No case pack or MOQ listed. If a buyer can't tell whether they're ordering 1 unit or 1 case, they'll assume the more conservative number and order less. Pitch copy where terms should be. A line of marketing language buried in the specs table makes the whole document harder to scan. No date or version number. Prices change; an undated line sheet floating in a buyer's inbox from eight months ago causes real confusion when your price has moved since.

Not always, and not on the first email. Most independent cafés, co-ops, and specialty stores are comfortable ordering off a clear cold email that states the wholesale price and case pack — no formal document required for a first trial case. A line sheet becomes more useful once you're talking to a store with more than one buyer, a distributor, or any account that wants to keep your pricing on file for repeat ordering without emailing you every time. Having one ready costs nothing and means you're never scrambling to build one the first time a buyer asks.