A popcorn co-packer pops and coats your kettle corn, caramel corn or cheddar corn to your recipe and packs it into bags, tubs or the gift tins that carry a popcorn business through December. Two things set popcorn apart from other snacks. Freshness: popped corn goes stale in weeks, so a co-packer's big minimum isn't a cash question but a freshness one, and a run has to sell before it softens. And the season: holiday tins are a large share of a popcorn maker's year, packed in a few weeks, which is exactly when co-packers are busiest, so a December run gets booked early. The other questions are the usual ones: your recipe and coating ratios, the colors and flavors that decide whether "natural" stays on the tin, and who buys the tins, which cost more than the popcorn inside them. In the example below, a Columbus popcorn maker packing 2,400 holiday tins pays $6.76 a tin doing it itself, $6.42 with a small popcorn co-packer, and $5.57 with a larger snack co-packer whose minimum is two Decembers' worth. Below is what popcorn co-packers do, the freshness and season questions, three quotes, and a free calculator.
The short version
- Popcorn co-packers pop, coat and pack your recipe in bags, tubs or tins.
- Popped corn goes stale in weeks, so freshness caps the run.
- Holiday tins are the busy season for co-packers too: book early.
- Agree coating ratios and flavor by weight, with a retained sample.
- Colors and flavors decide whether a "natural" claim stays on the tin.
- Tins cost more than the popcorn in them: decide who buys and stores them.
- TaroStack keeps track of your tins and kernels at the co-packer, as a site of its own. More below.
What popcorn co-packers do
They pop in large kettles or air poppers, coat with caramel, kettle sugar or cheese in tumblers, cool, sort out unpopped kernels, and fill bags, tubs or tins by weight or volume, then seal, label and case. Most buy the kernels, sugar and oil; a special cheese powder or flavor you may supply. What a co-packer is in general is in what is a co-packer, and snacks more widely in snack food co-packers.
Freshness, season and labels
| Question | What to settle |
|---|---|
| Freshness | How many weeks the popcorn stays crisp in your bag or tin, and the best-by date on it |
| Season | When the December run books, when it's packed, and how close to the selling weeks |
| Recipe | Kernel type, coating ratio and flavor by weight, against a retained sample |
| Natural claims | Colors and flavors that keep or break a "natural" claim |
| Tins | Who buys them, where they're stored, how many arrive damaged |
How Copper Kettle handled "natural" on its tins is in all natural label claim, and the packaging in how to package popcorn for sale.
Three quotes compared
Copper Kettle Popcorn, the made-up popcorn maker in Columbus, Ohio, I use in these examples, packs 2,400 one-gallon three-flavor gift tins, kettle, caramel and white cheddar, for December:
| Pop and pack it yourself | Small popcorn co-packer | Larger snack co-packer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Run you'd order | 2,400 | 2,400 | 5,000 |
| Minimum run | none | 1,000 | 5,000 |
| Good tins, after the loss | 2,352 | 2,376 | 4,950 |
| Setup | $0 | $200 | $400 |
| Fee, or your own labor, a tin | $1.67 | $1.40 | $0.80 |
| Popcorn and coatings, a tin | $1.20 | $1.10 | $1.00 |
| Tin, liner and label | $3.75 | $3.65 | $3.45 |
| Freight a run | $0 | $300 | $700 |
| Run cost | $15,888 | $15,260 | $27,350 |
| Months to sell the run | 1.0 | 1.0 | 2.1 |
| Storage while it sells | $0 | $0 | $212 |
| Cost a good tin | $6.76 | $6.42 | $5.57 |
Popping the tins in-house takes five minutes of work a tin, about 200 hours across December, which is why the small co-packer at 34 cents less a tin wins on both counts. The larger co-packer's $5.57 needs 5,000 tins, twice a December, and the second half would be stale by the next one. What the business earns is in popcorn business plan, and the December line in takt time formula.
What to settle before the first run
- The recipe by weight: kernels, coating, flavor, salt.
- How many weeks it stays crisp in the tin, and the best-by date.
- The pack date for the holiday run.
- Fill weight or volume, and the declared net weight.
- Who buys the tins and labels, and the lot code on each tin.
What a spec sheet holds is in product specification sheet.
Get the calculator
Download the popcorn co-packer quote calculator. One column for each quote and one for popping it yourself: type the run you'd order, the minimum, the loss, the setup, the fee or your labor, the popcorn and coatings, the tin and label, 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 tin 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
$8,400 of tins bought by November, shipped to the co-packer, filled, and sent back to shops and online orders in three weeks: a spreadsheet doesn't know where the tins are or which run a tin came from.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps track of your tins, kernels and finished popcorn at the co-packer, as a site of its own.
The co-packer as a site. The co-packer's premises can be a site, so the tins and labels you send are a transfer, shown in transit until they arrive, and the finished tins there are counted as yours. More than one site is on Standard at $99 a month.
Runs as batches, with dates. Each run is a batch with a lot and its best-by date, so orders pick the earliest dates first.
Tins on time. Tins and labels come up on the reorder list in days of cover, against each supplier's lead time, so the holiday tins are ordered in time.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Tins at the co-packer | Ask them | Stock at their site |
| Which run a tin came from | Unknown | The lot on the batch |
| Tins for December | Found short in November | Reorder list in days of cover |
Sites, transfers, recipes, batches and lots 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.