How to choose a co-packer

Choosing a co-packer is one of the highest-stakes decisions a food brand makes: the right one is invisible infrastructure, and the wrong one costs a year and a relaunch. These are the ten questions worth asking every candidate — and the answers worth listening for.

1. Do you sell products under your own brand?

If a co-packer runs house brands in your category, your recipe and your shelf data live inside a competitor’s building. Some brands accept that trade; many regret it. An independent co-packer with no house label has no incentive to learn from your success at your expense.

2. What certifications do you hold, and who audits you?

A GFSI-recognized certification such as SQF is table stakes for national retail — most major chains simply won’t onboard a product made in an uncertified plant. Ask when the last audit was and how it scored. Category certifications (Kosher, gluten-free) matter too if your label claims them.

3. Is your process the right one for my product?

Hot-fill and acidified processing suits high-acid products: sauces, salsas, dressings, marinades. Low-acid products like plain vegetables or meat sauces need retort; fresh products need refrigerated processing. A plant should tell you plainly whether your product fits its process — and decline it if not.

4. What are your minimums, and can I actually meet them?

Minimums are physics, not attitude: a kettle and a crew cost the same to mobilize for any batch size. Be honest about your volume. If a 1,000-gallon batch is several years of your sales, you need a smaller-batch partner first and a scale partner later.

5. Can you help with formulation, or only run what I hand you?

Recipes change at scale. A co-packer with food scientists in-house can adapt your recipe, reverse-engineer a benchmark, or value-engineer costs down — without a round trip through an outside lab every time something needs a tweak.

6. What packaging formats can you run?

Confirm your format is on their lines: glass or plastic, jar or squeeze bottle, retail sizes and food-service formats, case packs. “We could probably add that” usually means tooling costs and delays — get specifics.

7. Who owns the recipe?

The answer should be immediate: you do. Get it in writing. Be wary of arrangements where the plant’s “improvements” to your formula become their property.

8. What happens when something goes wrong?

Ask about their recall plan, lot traceability, and hold procedures. Every serious plant has had a hold; the good ones can walk you through exactly what happened and what changed afterward. Vague answers here are disqualifying.

9. Who will I actually talk to?

Some plants go quiet between purchase order and ship date. Ask who your contact is, how scheduling works, and how far ahead you’ll know your production dates. You want a partner that treats communication as part of the product.

10. Can I grow here?

Switching co-packers is expensive: requalification, retailer paperwork, transition inventory. Ask what volume the plant could support if your brand tripled. The right partner has headroom you won’t use for years.

The pattern behind all ten

Every question above is really the same question: does this plant win when I win? Independence, certifications, honest minimums, in-house science and open communication all point the same direction. Ask hard questions — a co-packer worth choosing will enjoy answering them.