How Your Food Business Can Benefit From Co-Packing and Private Label Services

Differences between Co-Packing and Private Label Services

There are a lot of methods for growing your business in the food industry. Two strategies you may have heard of are co-packing and using a private label. What do these terms mean, and how do they apply to your company? We are here to “unpack” these practices and elaborate on their usefulness for expanding your growing business.

What Is Co-Packing?

Let’s say you have a small hot sauce business where you produce and sell your unique product within your immediate region. You’ve gained popularity and need to keep up with increased demand, maybe even shipping nationwide. Your current facility or kitchen may not be able to handle it, and building a plant or acquiring more property may not be in the cards for you right now. The solution to this kind of problem is co-packing.

Co-packing, or contract packaging, is essentially outsourcing the manufacturing process. Another company will discreetly handle processing, cooking, packaging and labeling your product to your exact specifications. This is very common for consumable products sold by celebrity chefs, chain restaurants, breweries, wineries and food retailers.

Benefits of Co-Packing

This kind of agreement allows you to bypass the overhead required for brick-and-mortar assets. Contract packaging can work for both more established businesses as they grow and startups looking to move forward with a delicious idea. As long as you have a recipe or product in mind, you don’t have to worry about having the capacity to manufacture at scale.

Second, the entirety of the manufacturing process is removed from your plate. This is a big deal because manufacturing can be a complicated process that requires a lot of time and dedication. You also don’t have to worry about USDA inspections or complying with food safety or quality protocols. A reliable contract packaging partner will already have measures built in.

A partnership like this also allows room for future growth. You may want to expand your menu or product offerings at some point. Did you come up with a new recipe? Try it out. Some co-packing providers offer services for you to develop your ideas for a food product. You get to be more creative while also benefiting from the expertise and feedback of their kitchens.

What is Private Label?

A private label program applies your brand and packaging to a sourced product after it is manufactured with no attribution. In the food industry, these products can range from ingredients to full meals. This practice is more common than you think: 25% of unit sales in the U.S. use private labeling. To give you an example, if you’d like to start selling sausages at your Italian-themed store but haven't dabbled in food production, you can find a sausage manufacturer and ask them to put your packaging and labeling on their products.

Private labeling can be less straightforward as a reselling strategy. It can mean incorporating a specific ingredient that is sold by another company in your food product without explicit attribution.

This is very common in food products that have a lot of rotating or seasonal flavors, such as ice cream. While you may have adequate capacity for producing all the ice cream you need, it would be a monumental task to figure out and accommodate the production of the hundreds of eccentric food products necessary to create a wide variety of intricate flavors. If you want to start making coffee-flavored ice cream, there's no need to build a roastery just find yourself some beans.

Benefits of Private Labeling

Private labeling programs eliminate the need for you to reinvent the wheel as a business. If you’d like to expand by adding more products to your menu, don’t worry about coming up with your own recipe. There are only so many ways you can cook a meatball. If you already know what you need to fill a gap in your lineup, you can find quality products already out there and ready for your branding.

In general, outsourcing is a tried-and-true method for streamlining your business. It’s great for fulfilling a vision that you would have no way of achieving on your own otherwise. You can also experiment with how your customer base will receive a new product before investing time in the further development of your vision.

Partnering With Marisa Foods

At Marisa Foods we offer both co-packing and private label programs, giving you the flexibility to explore your options with the same company. No matter what you choose, you will go through a comprehensive 3-step process, starting with a consultation. This ensures that we are a good fit and that your vision is achieved. Then we move into development, which entails fine-tuning the taste, texture, color and quality through a sample and feedback process. Finally, production can start and you can go about your business.

Marisa Foods primarily produces meat products, including sausage, meatballs and deli meats. We also manufacture various sauces, kinds of cheese and plant-based meat alternatives. We started as a neighborhood Italian delicatessen in 1947, so we’ve been cooking tasty, high-quality food for a long time. Our facilities meet the highest USDA and food safety standards.

Our experience and expertise allow us to help you develop custom food products and menus that will work well with your brand. If you don’t quite know what you want, that isn’t a problem. Marisa Foods uses only the best fresh ingredients and spices, so whatever you come up with will result in a masterpiece.

Whether you run a restaurant or sell packaged consumables, your company has the potential to benefit from co-packing or using a private label. Test the waters and reach out to Marisa Foods for your very own consultation. Don’t accept arbitrary limitations; push your business into the future today.