Sauce Co-Packer: Rules, Minimums and Quotes Compared

A sauce co-packer makes, fills and caps your sauce to your recipe, often hot-filled into glass, at runs from a thousand bottles to tens of thousands. Which co-packers can make it depends first on what kind of sauce it is to FDA: an acid food, like most vinegar-based hot sauces and many barbecue sauces, or an acidified food, a low-acid food made safe by adding acid, which needs a plant registered and set up for it. After that, it's minimums and price. In the example below, a barbecue sauce brand selling 3,000 bottles a month pays $3.23 a bottle in its own kitchen, $2.96 with a small sauce co-packer, and $2.44 with a hot-fill line whose minimum is three months of sales. Below is the acid-or-acidified question, what the plant has to do, what it needs from you, three quotes, and a free quote calculator.

The short version

• Find out whether your sauce is an acid food or an acidified food; a process authority can tell you.
• An acidified sauce needs a co-packer registered with FDA for acidified foods, making it to a filed process.
• Every batch is made to a pH of 4.6 or below, and the pH is recorded.
• Bring a recipe by weight, the process authority's letter, specs, bottles, caps and labels.
• Compare quotes on the cost of a good bottle and the cash out before the run sells.
• Move to a bigger line when its minimum is a couple of months of your sales.
• TaroStack keeps track of what's at your co-packer, by lot, as a site of its own. More below.

Acid or acidified

FDA's acidified foods are low-acid foods with acid or acid foods added, with a water activity above 0.85 and a finished equilibrium pH of 4.6 or below, such as peppers and pickled vegetables. Acid foods, including standardized and nonstandardized dressings and condiment sauces that contain small amounts of low-acid foods and end up at a pH not much different from their main acid ingredient, aren't included (21 CFR 114.3). So a barbecue sauce built on tomato and vinegar may be an acid food, and a sauce heavy with onions, peppers or garlic may be acidified. The line isn't always obvious, which is why a process authority reviews the recipe and says which it is; how that works is in process authority letter.

If it's acidified, the co-packer's plant must be registered with FDA on Form FDA 2541 and have its process for your sauce filed (21 CFR 108.25). Each batch is made so that it reaches an equilibrium pH of 4.6 or lower within the time the scheduled process sets, thermally processed, and made according to that process (21 CFR 114.80). Ask a co-packer whether it's registered for acidified foods before you ask for a quote. This is general information, not legal advice.

What a sauce co-packer will ask you for

• The recipe by weight, with every ingredient's supplier and spec; cups and "to taste" don't scale to a 300-gallon kettle.
• The process authority's letter for that recipe, saying whether it's acidified and, if so, the process: pH, fill temperature, hold time.
• Specs for the finished sauce: pH range, Brix or viscosity, color, fill weight.
• Packaging and labels, or approval for the co-packer to buy them; the label is yours to get right, allergens included.
• Insurance and a deposit, and often a pilot batch you pay for and sign off.

How a spec sheet is laid out is in product specification sheet.

Three quotes compared

Congaree Smokehouse Sauce Co., a made-up barbecue sauce maker in Columbia, South Carolina, I use in these examples, sells about 3,000 sixteen-ounce bottles a month:

Making it itself, Congaree rents a commercial kitchen for $300 a day and fills 600 bottles with two people at $20 an hour: 67 cents of labor a bottle, five days a month. The small co-packer saves 27 cents a bottle, about $800 a month, and those five days. The hot-fill line saves another 52 cents and buys ingredients and glass by the pallet, but its 10,000-bottle minimum is $23,600 out and more than three months of sauce on its shelves. When it's worth leaving your own kitchen is in co-packer vs commercial kitchen.

The first run

Before the first full run: a pilot batch made to the process, tasted and pH-tested against your kitchen batch; label proofs checked against the recipe, allergens and net weight; and an agreed lot code format, so every bottle can be traced to its run. On the day, ask for the batch's pH readings and fill temperatures; they're the records the process calls for. What to settle in writing is in what is a co-packer.

Get the calculator

Download the sauce co-packer quote calculator. One column for each quote and one for making 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 bottle 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

With sauce made at a co-packer and shipped to your warehouse, distributors and stores, the questions move: how many cases are at the co-packer, how many bottles and caps are on their way there, and which run a bottle in a customer's hand came from.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps track of what's at your co-packer, by lot, as a site of its own.

The co-packer as a site. The co-packer's premises can be a site, so the bottles, caps and labels you send are a transfer, shown in transit until they arrive, and the cases on their shelves are yours, counted at their place. More than one site is on Standard at $99 a month.

Runs with their records. Each run is a batch at the co-packer's site with a lot of its own, and a batch record form can carry your own fields, such as the pH readings and fill temperature the co-packer sends, with limits. A recall report shows which customers got each lot.

Packaging on time. Bottles, caps and labels come up on the reorder list in days of cover, with each supplier's lead time and minimum. How stock across places works is in multi-location inventory.

Sites, transfers, 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.

Questions people also ask

Does a barbecue sauce need a process authority?

A process authority can say whether your recipe is an acid food or an acidified food, and set the process if it's acidified. Co-packers ask for that letter before a first run.

What is the minimum order for a sauce co-packer?

It depends on the line. In the example, 1,000 bottles at a small co-packer and 10,000 at a hot-fill line.

How much does it cost to co-pack a sauce?

In the example, $2.96 a bottle at a small co-packer and $2.44 at a larger line, including ingredients, bottle, cap, label and freight.

What pH does a sauce need to be shelf stable?

An acidified sauce must reach a finished equilibrium pH of 4.6 or lower under FDA's rules, made to its scheduled process.