As to more efficiently manage the inventory in the retail supply chain and to meet the customer demand in a timely manner, vendor-managed inventory (VMI) has been widely accepted, which manages inventory in the retail supply chain via sharing information and collaborating with the retailers. Applying VMI generates vendor-managed inventory/distribution problem (VMIDP), which involves inventory management for both the vendor and the retailers, and the design of vehicle routes for delivery, to minimize the total operating cost in the supply chain. In this paper, we suggest a mixed integer programming (MIP) model to obtain the optimal solution for VMIDP in a two-echelon retail supply chain, and develop an efficient heuristic based on the operating principles of the MIP model. To evaluate the performance of the heuristic, its solution was compared with the one of the MIP model on a total of twenty seven test problems. As a result, the heuristic found optimal solutions on seven problems in a significantly reduced time, and generated a 4.3% error rate of total cost in average for all problems. The heuristic is applied to the case problem of the local famous franchise company together with GIS, showing that it is capable of providing a solution efficiently in a relatively short time even in the real world situation.