Guide
Shelf-ready trays, club packs, display builds and compliance labels. What the big retailers actually want, where shippers get dinged, and how we handle it in Atlanta.
Written by the Porter Logistics Atlanta team. Updated October 2026.
"Retail-ready" means different things at different retailers, which is most of the problem. A grocery distribution center wants shelf-ready trays that a stocker can cut open and slide onto the shelf. Costco and Sam's want club packs on half pallets with a display header. Walmart wants both, plus a label in exactly the right spot or you pay a chargeback.
This guide covers the formats we build most often in Atlanta, the mistakes that cost shippers money, and how the work runs on a 3PL repack line.
Shelf-ready trays. Product sits in a corrugated tray with a perforated or film hood. The stocker tears the hood off and puts the tray on the shelf. The tray needs to survive the pallet and still look clean. Grocery and drug chains ask for this most.
Club packs. Multiple units bundled into one sellable item, usually shrink-wrapped or in a printed carton, on a half or quarter pallet. Costco, Sam's Club and BJ's each have their own pallet footprint and header-card rules.
Display builds. A corrugated display shipper, pre-filled, that goes to the floor as a unit. These are labor-heavy, since every display is hand-filled and the artwork has to line up. They are also where a good line saves you the most money, because a display that arrives damaged is a display that does not sell.
Variety and mixed packs. Several SKUs combined into one case or one pack. Kitting and counting are the whole job. The retailer's item file has to match the pack exactly, down to the GTIN on the outer case.
Retailer compliance chargebacks are rarely about the product. They are about the case, the label and the pallet. The ones we see most:
Every one of these can be fixed at the repack stage, and it is far cheaper to fix there than at the retailer's dock.
The faster path to a real number is to send the retailer's routing guide or vendor manual, the current case and pallet spec, a photo of the product as it arrives today, and the volume by SKU for the first run and the expected monthly run rate. If you have artwork for a display or header card, send that too. We will come back with a per-unit price, a materials list, and a start date.
Product comes into one of the Porter warehouses in Atlanta and is received into the WMS by lot. The line is set up with your materials: trays, film, labels, displays. We run a first-article build and photograph it, so you can approve it before the full run. Finished units are counted, labeled, palletized to the retailer's pattern and either put away or loaded on the outbound order.
Because the repack happens inside a distribution warehouse, there is no second truck to a packager. Product goes from storage to the line to the dock. For food items, the work happens in an AIB and SQF audited building with a Georgia Department of Agriculture license.
Most retail prep jobs are really labeling jobs with some corrugated around them. GS1-128 case labels, retailer-specific pallet labels, date and lot codes, country of origin, and sometimes a second language. We print and apply in-house. If your supplier shipped product with the wrong label, we over-label rather than reprint cases, which is faster and cheaper.
Corrugated and printed film have lead times, often two to three weeks. If the retailer has given you a ship window, start the packaging order before the quote is final. We will tell you the material specs early so that can happen.
Send the retailer's routing guide and a photo of your current case. We will tell you what has to change and what it costs.
Get a quote 470-706-1452Send a few details and someone from the Atlanta team will get back to you. Or call 470-706-1452.