Co-packers and contract food manufacturers for private label food and beverage

Co-packer, private label, and contract manufacturer are not the same order

A pure co-packer, or contract packager, takes finished or semi-finished product and packages it: filling, sealing, labeling, casing. A contract food manufacturer makes the product from ingredients and packages it. A private label food manufacturer makes its own stock formula and puts your brand on it.

Many facilities do more than one of these, which is why the words get used loosely. Decide what you actually need before you ask for quotes. If you have a recipe and a co-manufacturer, you are buying production. If you want an existing product relabeled, you are buying private label, and the minimums and timelines are completely different.

Food safety certification is the gate to retail

Every facility making food for US sale must be FDA registered and operate a food safety plan under the Food Safety Modernization Act, with preventive controls and a qualified individual. That is the legal floor.

The commercial ceiling is a GFSI-recognized certification. Most national and regional retailers will not stock a product unless the co-packer holds SQF or BRCGS, because their own audit requirements flow down to you. Ask for the certificate and its current audit score early. A facility that is FDA registered but has no GFSI scheme can still be right for foodservice or direct-to-consumer, but it can quietly cap where your brand is allowed to go.

Where the shelf life and the process meet

How a product is preserved decides which co-packer can make it. A high-acid product like a hot sauce or a pickle can be hot filled and is relatively forgiving. A low-acid canned or pouched product needs retort and a filed scheduled process from a process authority, which is a specialized and regulated capability.

Refrigerated and frozen products avoid thermal processing but add cold-chain logistics and a shorter shelf life. Name your target shelf life and distribution temperature in the brief, because they narrow the list of facilities faster than almost anything else.

Cost is a run, not a unit

Co-packers price a production run, and changeover, sanitation, and setup are mostly fixed. That is why the per-case cost falls steeply with volume, and why a short first run can look expensive per unit.

Ask each co-packer for a minimum run, the per-case cost at that minimum, and the per-case cost at two or three times the volume. Also ask who buys the ingredients and packaging, because in many arrangements you supply the components and the co-packer charges a tolling fee to run them. Two quotes are only comparable once you know which model each one assumes.

Every food category quotes its minimum in a different unit, and that is the whole problem

After reading roughly forty US co packers across sauce, beverage, snack, supplement and confection work in 2026, the single most useful thing we can tell you is that the numbers you are comparing are not in the same units, and almost nobody converts them for you.

Sauce co packers quote GALLONS, because a kettle is scheduled by batch volume. Published minimums we have read run from a 24 gallon batch at Kensington Food Co. in Philadelphia to 1,800 gallons per SKU at Brooks' Bottling Co. A gallon is 128 fluid ounces, which is about 25.6 five ounce woozy bottles before fill loss, and three co packers publish their own conversion: The Spice Guy states 50 gallons is roughly 1,200 five ounce bottles, and PepperNutz states 100 gallons is approximately 2,500.

Beverage co packers quote CASES and CANS, because a filling line is scheduled by run length. Snack and bar co packers quote POUNDS, UNITS, SERVINGS, BAGS, CASES or BATCHES, six units for one question, because an oven thinks in pounds, a flow wrapper thinks in units and a nutrition panel thinks in servings. Curio Sweets in Houston publishes the conversion for its own category, 100 pounds per SKU equals 800 protein bars at 2 oz each, which gives you eight two ounce pieces per pound. Supplement co packers quote SOFTGELS or BOTTLES, and two vendors independently define a unit as a 60 count bottle.

None of these plants is being evasive. Each unit is the honest way that building schedules work. But a founder holding three quotes in three units cannot tell which one they can afford, and the spread usually collapses once you convert. That conversion is the first thing our agent does with a shortlist, and it is the reason a 100 pound bakery and a 10,000 unit bar plant can finally sit on one comparable line.

Read the category page for your format, because the unit changes the answer

The practical upshot is that co packing is not one market. It is several markets that share a word, and the useful research is format specific.

If you are making a sauce, a dressing, a marinade or a hot sauce, the unit is gallons, the gate is an FDA acidified foods process filing that has to be made per container size, and stock private label starts far lower than custom: PepperNutz publishes 60 bottles stock against roughly 2,500 custom at the same company. That ground is covered on our sauce manufacturers and white label hot sauce co packers page.

If you are canning a functional or energy drink, the unit is cases and cans, the minimums are usually stated as adjectives rather than numbers, and the FDA beverage versus liquid supplement path decides which facility can legally make it. That is on energy drink manufacturers and private label co packers. For any other drink, sparkling tea, juice, functional soda or bottled water, the minimums are stated in gallons, cans and pallets, and the printed can supplier often sets a bigger minimum than the plant does. That comparison is on beverage co packers and private label drink manufacturers.

If you are making a bar, a granola, a jerky or a popcorn, the unit is whichever of six the plant happens to use, and the first sorting question is not price but regulator: meat and poultry snacks need a plant under a USDA FSIS grant of inspection, while bars, granola, chips and cookies sit under FDA. That is on snack manufacturers and private label snack co packers.

Beverage work also splits by sub format in a way the word co packer hides. Tea, cold brew coffee, juice, water and alcoholic ready to drink lines are different equipment with different sanitation cycles, and a plant that runs one will often not quote another. Say which one in the brief rather than asking for beverage co packing generally, because the answer you get back is only as specific as the question.

Ask for the minimum in two units, and the price at two quantities

Two questions turn a vague co packing reply into something you can budget against, and they work in every format.

The first is to ask for the minimum in two units: the piece you will sell and the finished case you will ship. Plants answer in the unit their schedule uses, and warehouses, freight quotes and retailer pallet plans are all built on cases. Asking for both in the same email from the same person also catches the discrepancies that are otherwise invisible. We have seen a bar co packer state 10,000 bars and roughly 940 boxes of 12 on the same page, which does not reconcile, almost certainly because a case configuration changed at some point and one number was not updated.

The second is to ask for the per unit price at the minimum and at roughly double it. The gap between those two figures tells you how much of the quote is one time setup rather than product, which is the single most useful number in the whole exercise and the one almost nobody volunteers. Development fees, recipe replication, shelf life testing and nutrition panels are charged before a single sellable case exists, and in almost every category they are billed per flavor, which is how a three flavor launch quietly becomes three development bills.

Add one more line while you are writing: ask for a delivery date for finished goods and the milestone it is counted from. Deposit, approved formula, received packaging and received ingredients are four different starting guns, and the last two move your film, cartons and raw materials onto the critical path without anyone mentioning it.