A baked goods co-packer bakes, cools, wraps and packs your cookies, bars, brownies or breads in a commercial bakery, often for a brand that has landed a grocery order its kitchen can't fill. The questions are mostly practical: whether your recipe survives a bigger mixer and a tunnel oven, how long a wrapped cookie stays good on a store shelf, what else runs on the line, and who answers for the label. In the example below, a cookie maker selling 6,000 wrapped cookies a month pays $1.63 a cookie baking itself, $1.33 with a small bakery co-packer, and 98 cents with a larger commercial bakery whose minimum is more than three months of sales, longer than a fresh cookie lasts. Below is shelf life, allergens, the label, what the co-packer needs, three quotes, and a free calculator.
The short version
- A recipe often changes at a co-packer: bigger batches, different ovens, sometimes ingredients for shelf life.
- Agree on the shelf life and test it: a cookie that's fine for a week at a market may not last a month at a grocer.
- Wheat, milk, eggs, nuts and sesame run through bakeries; ask what's on the line before yours.
- Your label names you with "Manufactured for" or "Distributed by", and declares the allergens.
- Selling to grocery chains can end a small-business nutrition label exemption; plan for Nutrition Facts.
- Compare quotes on the cost of a good unit and on how long the minimum takes to sell.
- TaroStack keeps track of your cookies at the co-packer, by lot and date, as a site of its own. More below.
Shelf life
A cookie baked on Friday for a Saturday market has a different job from one baked for a grocery shelf, where it may sit for weeks after a distributor's warehouse. Co-packers can extend shelf life by baking drier, wrapping better, adding humectants or preservatives, or packing with less oxygen, and each of those changes the cookie. Agree on the shelf life you need, test it on the co-packer's cookies, not your kitchen's, and put the best-by date and lot on every wrapper. How to test and set a date is in shelf life testing methods.
Allergens and the label
Bakeries run wheat, milk and eggs all day, and often nuts and sesame. Ask what runs on the line before your product and how it's cleaned, especially if you sell a nut-free or sesame-free cookie, and keep your own allergen list per product; one is in allergen matrix template. Your label names you rather than the bakery, qualified with words such as "Manufactured for" or "Distributed by" (21 CFR 101.5), and the bakery is a registered food facility (21 CFR 1.225). Moving into grocery chains can also end a small-business exemption from Nutrition Facts, which is set out in nutrition label small business exemption. This is general information, not legal advice.
What a bakery co-packer will ask you for
- The recipe by weight, with each ingredient's spec, and openness to changes for their equipment.
- Product specs: weight, diameter, color, texture, and how much breakage is acceptable.
- The shelf life you need, and who pays for testing.
- Wrappers, labels and cases, or approval for them to buy them.
- A forecast and a deposit, and the retailer's requirements if it's a grocery order.
What grocers ask of a supplier is in selling to grocery stores requirements.
Three quotes compared
Granite Peak Cookie Co., a made-up cookie maker in Sandy, Utah, I use in these examples, sells about 6,000 individually wrapped three-ounce cookies a month to grocers and cafés:
| Bake it yourself | Small bakery co-packer | Larger commercial bakery | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Run you'd order | 1,200 | 6,000 | 20,000 |
| Minimum run | none | 3,000 | 20,000 |
| Good cookies, after breakage | 1,164 | 5,880 | 19,800 |
| Setup, or kitchen rent | $200 | $300 | $600 |
| Fee, or your own labor, a cookie | $0.60 | $0.45 | $0.22 |
| Ingredients a cookie | $0.66 | $0.62 | $0.55 |
| Wrapper and label | $0.15 | $0.14 | $0.12 |
| Freight a run | $0 | $250 | $600 |
| Run cost | $1,892 | $7,810 | $19,000 |
| Months to sell the run | 0.2 | 1.0 | 3.3 |
| Storage while it sells | $0 | $0 | $345 |
| Cost a good cookie | $1.63 | $1.33 | $0.98 |
Baking itself, Granite Peak fills 1,200 wrapped cookies a day, five days a month. The small bakery co-packer saves 30 cents a cookie and those days. The larger bakery saves another 35 cents, but its 20,000-cookie run is more than three months of sales, and Granite Peak's cookie is good for about a month in its wrapper. Taking that quote means a reformulated cookie with a longer shelf life, or a lot of stale cookies. How co-packer quotes compare more generally is in co-packer vs commercial kitchen.
Get the calculator
Download the baked goods co-packer quote calculator. One column for each quote and one for baking it yourself: type the run you'd order, the minimum, the loss, the setup, the fee or your labor, ingredients, packaging, freight and storage, and the run's cost, the months it takes to sell at your sales a month, the storage while it sells, the cost of each good unit and the cash out before it sells fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Wrapped cookies at a co-packer with a month of shelf life, decorated cookies still made in your kitchen, cases going to grocers that want the newest dates and cafés that take whatever's oldest. A spreadsheet can't say how many cookies of each flavor are at the co-packer, which lot dates out first, or which stores got a run with the wrong allergen label.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps track of your cookies at the co-packer, by lot and date, as a site of its own.
The co-packer as a site. The co-packer's premises can be a site, so the wrappers and labels you send are a transfer, shown in transit until they arrive, and the finished cases there are counted as yours. More than one site is on Standard at $99 a month.
Lots with dates. Each run is a batch with a lot and a best-by date, so orders pick the earliest dates first, an alert warns before a lot nears its date, and a grocer can carry its own minimum days left. A recall report shows which stores got each lot. How lot tracking works is in what is lot tracking.
Waste you can see. Stale or broken cookies written off are adjustments with a reason, so waste shows by reason and product.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Cookies at the co-packer | Ask them | Stock at their site |
| Which lot dates out first | A guess | Earliest dates first, with alerts |
| A grocer's minimum days left | Remembered | The customer's own rule |
| Which stores got lot 1012 | Search the invoices | One recall report |
Sites, transfers, lots, expiry alerts and recalls are on Standard at $99 a month for more than one site. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.