Forward buy exposure

A tariff-driven price increase opened a 90-day window. Retailers loaded at the old price. Ninety days later the deductions arrived — calculated on a basis nobody documented.

Illustrative fixture data — Blue Harbor Seafood Co. is a fictional company

MAR 3

Price increase announced: +9.5%, effective Jun 1. Tariff pass-through on imported tuna.

MAR 3 – MAY 31

90-day window open. Retailers may buy unlimited volume at $28.40 per case.

JUN 1

New price live at $31.10. Shipments collapse — demand was pulled forward.

JUL – AUG

Promotional deductions arrive against forward-bought inventory.

Forward-bought volume

—

cases shipped above consumption, inside the window

Deferred price capture

—

— per case × forward-bought volume

Claims over commitment

—

— of — claims exceed what was agreed

Commitment on record

—

provable as of the date each claim was made

Why the increase happened — and why it keeps happening

The window is not an accident of this one price increase. It is a recurring feature of the current cost environment, and it reopens every time a manufacturer moves price.

Tariffs land on landed cost, not on the shelf. Manufacturers work through existing inventory and supply contracts before repricing — a 12 to 18 month lag. That is why the repricing wave is arriving through the middle of 2026 rather than when the duties were set.
The increases are concentrated and simultaneous. Because everyone's contracts roll at roughly the same time, categories reprice together — produce, packaged goods, imported specialty foods, and beverages within the same few months.
The numbers are real. Food prices ran +3.8% year over year in August 2026. Fresh lettuce was +32.1% and tomatoes +19.5% against June 2025. P&G alone estimated roughly $1B in pre-tax tariff cost for FY2026.
Frequency is the change, not magnitude alone. Price increases used to be annual. When they become quarterly, the forward-buy window stops being an event to manage once a year and becomes a standing condition — and each one writes another set of accruals nobody can produce.

Sources — USDA ERS Food Price Outlook · US food inflation series · HRG — tariffs, trade spend and the margin squeeze. Blue Harbor Seafood Co. is fictional; the market conditions above are not.

The whipsaw

Shipments spike inside the window, then collapse below consumption for a full quarter. Neither number reflects consumer demand — both reflect the buy-in. Q2 looks excellent. Q3 craters.

Shipments to retail

POS consumption

Forward-buy window

What it is worth — put their revenue in

Move the assumptions and the numbers recalculate live. Nothing here is pre-baked: every figure below is computed from the four inputs on the left.

Annual revenue $120,000,000

Trade spend, % of revenue 15%

Leakage, % of trade spend 10%

Recovery rate 70%

Exit multiple 6.0×

Trade spend—

Estimated leakage—

Recovered, annually—

Enterprise value at exit—

Recovered trade dollars fall straight to EBITDA — the money was already spent and already belonged to the business. No new customers, no new products, no incremental sales investment. Enterprise value is the recovered figure carried at the exit multiple.

Deductions received — July / August

Every claim matched against the commitment on record at the time it was made. Click any row for the evidence.

	Retailer	Program	Committed	Claimed	Variance	Ledger	Status

Disputes opened $0

Naomi — grounded

Naomi — refused

Midwest Grocers' $47,900 claim cannot be assessed. No commitment document was ever written to the ledger for program MWG-Q2-DISPLAY — the deal was agreed verbally on a call. It is reported as unprovable: not clean, and not fraud. The system will not assert what it cannot ground. That gap is itself the finding — it is the fourth-largest claim of the period, and there is nothing on record to test it against.