What is Co-packing?

Q.  When it comes to food products, I hear the term co-packing said a lot.  I don’t know what that means.

Thanks for your question!  According to Wikipedia, “A contract packer, or co-packer, is a company that manufactures and packages foods or other products for their clients. To market and distribute, a co-packer works under contract with the hiring company to manufacture food as though the products were manufactured directly by the hiring company.”

Best Brand Bottlers, Inc. is such a company, and we specialize in acidified and thermal processing of sauces, marinades, dressings and condiments and have the ability and the legal authority to pack those products under strict state and federal guidelines. 

What that really means is that we take your recipe for any of the types of products listed above, create a formula from which we can bottle large quantities, and purchase all of the ingredients and materials that go into manufacturing that product.  This is after making sure that we have satisfied all of your requirements pertaining to package size and raw material selection.

Not bad, eh?  You hand us a recipe and we do all the work!   There’s more give and take during the process, but that’s essentially it.

At Best Brand Bottlers we pride ourselves on working with you, our customer, to make sure that you understand the process and are fully equipped to market your product to the best of your abilities.

Our motto is “Customer for Life.”

How Do I Start My Own Food Business?

Q.  I’ve been a foodie my whole life and I have great recipes.  My friends all tell me that I should sell my products commercially.  How do I go about doing this?

There are a few ways to accomplish this goal.

First, you could go through all of the research and development for every single product that you want, which we at Best Brand Bottlers are well-equipped to help you with. We would make sure that you have everything you need – your formula, your Food Processing Authority Letter, nutritional information and ingredients list, and a few samples for you to sell to you prospective clients. To get each of your products through this process is about $1000 apiece. To create a catalog of products could cost you in the 10s of thousands of dollars.

Another way would be to have a flagship product, created from a recipe that is near and dear to your heart or that has been in your family for generations. This would be your baby and we would walk you through the process above. Then you could take any of Best Brand Bottlers’ Private Label Gourmet Products, brand them as your own and sell them.

We have two clients who started with one product and are now in the process of expanding their product line with many of the established private labeled products that we created. This is working extremely well for both clients.

There is a third way. You could create a catalog of salad dressings, hot sauces, marinades, pasta sauces and salsas from the Best Brand Bottlers array of thirty-two different products.  We can help you with purchasing sales samples, private labeling for you or your clients, establishing which products suit your own personal tastes and where you want to market your line.

Whether you go the route of Contract Packing, Private Label or a hybrid of the two - any way you envision your future - rest assured that Best Brand Bottlers will help you every step of the way. It’s what we do.

Best Brand Bottlers, Inc. in Sarasota, Florida is a company guided by a strong moral compass. 

What is Private Labeling?

Q.  I’ve heard the term Private Label a lot lately.  What is Private Labeling? 

Simply put, Private label products are products manufactured by one company and offered under another company's brand.  Our stuff, your brand. 

At Best Brand Bottlers, we have 32 products available, some in restaurant or food service sizes, that we manufacture.  These are tried and true gourmet recipes that we’ve formulated, manufactured  and currently offer to restaurants, country clubs, charities and churches, and corporations.

In essence you have the ability to offer these products under your brand name.  You can offer a product without having to go through the process of getting that product approved through your state and the federal government, because we’ve already done that.

According to Wikipedia, these are the advantages to utilize private label brands:

1. Control over pricing of the product/service,
2. Put forth own ideas on marketing plans,
3. Create personalized image which in turn leads to higher customer loyalty,
4. Higher control on production, marketing, distribution and profits,
5. Give their own inputs, additional materials, logos, tag lines, etc.
6. Customer's changing preference - drive towards private label products.

Retailers, restaurants and businesses of varying size can rely on Best Brand Bottlers, Inc. to provide superior private label services in our new, modern manufacturing facility.

How Do I Know that My Recipe Won’t Be Stolen?

Q.  How do I know that my formula/recipe will not be stolen or closely replicated?

We’ve heard horror stories from our clients that others have actually done this and either wanted to charge them more money for their own formula or refused to deliver on products or the recipes/formulas themselves.

First off it saddens me to think that they are unscrupulous people in this world who would stoop so low as to steal someone’s treasured recipe.   As a person who has secret recipes myself, I would hate for that to happen to me. 

Please understand that Best Brand Bottlers is a faith based operation.  We pride ourselves on our honesty, integrity and ethics. We would never steal your formula and we protect others’ recipes as if they were our own. In addition, we will mutually sign a Confidentiality Agreement which legally binds us to protect your company proprietary information.

Here’s what we believe.  You are our customer. It’s YOUR recipe.  It’s YOUR formula.  It’s YOUR product.  Once we have completed the whole process of taking your recipe through formulation, testing and authorization to go to production, you will have a package that you can take to any co-packing company in the United States.

That will be your choice to go to whomever you feel more comfortable with, but we trust that you will become one of Best Brand Bottlers’ customers for life.  

Thanks for your great question! 

 

Best Brand Bottlers is a trusted leader in thermal acidified food processing and manufacturing.

How Much Does Bottling and Manufacturing Cost?

Q.  How much does it cost for Best Brand Bottlers to bottle and manufacture my product for me?

 

It’s somewhere between not much and a whole lot! 

 

We often get that question in the first conversation and we have to say that it’s almost impossible to answer because of the variables that go into production.   What are those variables? Here are some examples: brand named products versus supplier branded products, cost of commodity items versus specialty items, the cost of the container that you've specified, the cost of the packaging, and the cost of the labor

 

We will not know any of this information until we start working with your exact recipe.  What we like to do is take your formula and a sample that you've made and make sure we can recreate it, using products that are readily available at wholesale pricing.  When we do this we may have to take brand name products out of the equation.  If for example, your pasta sauce recipe calls for a specific kind of tomato – let’s say certified San Marzano tomato, we may substitute (with your approval, of course) a tomato that is from another region, has the same flavor profile, and is less expensive.

 

“Can’t you give me a ballpark figure?” is the usual follow-up question.   Yes, we do have a lot of experience in costing out large scale jobs, but it takes a lot of formulation to get there.  We believe we would be doing you a disservice by giving you an inaccurate cost.  We would hate to give you a price of between let’s say $10,000 and $20,000 because if it comes in on the higher end you will be very disappointed.  That’s just human nature.

 

That’s one of our Frequently Asked Questions and we’re glad you asked.  Thanks for your interest in Best Brand Bottlers – don’t forget to check out our product selection on the Private Labeling Page.

 

 

Can I Bottle Pasta Sauce With Pepperoni In It?

Q.  I want Best Brand Bottlers to bottle my pasta sauce from an old family recipe.  It's a red sauce and it has chunks of pepperoni in it.  Can you process it for me?

Pepperoni in pasta sauce!  That sounds fabulous! I’ve had ground hot Italian sausage in a meat sauce, but never pepperoni.  As tasty as your sauce sounds, unfortunately we cannot pack meat products into anything we bottle here.  We specialize in acidified and thermal processing of sauces, marinades, dressings and condiments. FDA Regulation 21 CFR 114 states that "Acidified foods are low-acid foods to which acid(s) or acid food(s) are added; these foods include, but are not limited to, beans, cucumbers, cabbage, artichokes, cauliflower, puddings, peppers, tropical fruits, and fish, singly or in any combination. They have a water activity (aw) greater than 0.85 and have a finished equilibrium pH of 4.6 or below."  Our manufacturing plant has not been approved for handling and processing meat and we follow the regulations both to the letter and the spirit of the law. 

If you would like for Best Brand Bottlers to manufacture your pasta sauce without the pepperoni, we’ll be happy to help get you started.  Perhaps on your packaging you could have your customers add pepperoni in the cooking instructions. 

Thanks for your question and your interest in Best Brand Bottlers - an industry leader in co-packing and private labeling for executive chefs/restaurants, food service distributors and major grocery chains.