Help needed to find a contract food manufacturer / bakery in the US or Canada that works with startups

[B_Grazed]

We are a small team of investors launching a brand in the snack sector.  Our product is a salty wheat cracker, and needless to say it tastes delicious. 

We are looking for a contract food manufacturer, bakery or a business with appropriate facilities and experience that can bake our product and is happy with an MOQ of 1,000lbs or less, per run. That likely means relatively small food manufacturer's, large retail bakeries or small commercial bakeries.

To show our appreciation in helping us find a suitable production partner we will give you $1,000 if you introduce us to someone and we sign a contract with them!

Feel free to reach out with any questions.

Thanks in advance!

[George Hajjar]

Good afternoon,

You may want to consider businesses in the SFA's 2022 Co-Manufacturer Resource Guide. The resource is free for members.

Best,

George Hajjar

[Victoria J Ho]

Hey Bored and Grazed, I don't need the $1000 but I can share some best practices for you to find success in this essential piece of your launch journey. As an innovation and commercialization company, we work with co-packers all day (and night). The most effective way to begin your search is to set your product up with the right document bundle that allows you to attract a low volume copacker. 1000lbs of finished product is not typically how bakery copackers measure volume; they are looking for projections that give them insight on the number of saleable units you need, per quarter, and they will establish terms and tolling based on that number. To facilitate a meaningful convo, or even have a copacker pick up the phone, you also need to have a tight product specification sheet for each SKU at minimum, and better would be a scaled ratio based formulation. For raw materials, you should have a working matrix of vetted wholesale suppliers and their documentation; if you're looking for the copacker to supply materials then you should also have very clear specs for each ingredient (i.e. what % fat of cocoa powder at what mesh size; what varietal cinnamon; what country of origin for flaxseed, etc -- these are baked goods specific). Most importantly is your statement of process, which will include all codifications of fill weights, bake times and temps, holding protocols and packout.  Packaging prototypes or renders help the copacker visualize the packout equipment you'll need. Lastly for the set up is your certification requirements.  Co-packers tend to enjoy dealing with operational experts with CPG knowledge, so I'd enter the convo with investor background as a gentle sidebar. Speaking the language of copackers gets them to play nice.   Best of luck.