4 Steps to Bring Your Food Product to Market

In the last few years, the food and beverage industry has seen a significant shift in production and distribution. As consumers have become more aware of their health and the food they eat, they have become increasingly concerned with what goes into their food and how it is manufactured. This shift has brought about increased demand for transparency within the food industry and has seen the rise and shine of challenger brands.

The process of bringing your food product to market can be an exciting and daunting one. There are many steps, but we're here to break them down for you in simple manageable chunks.

Product Development

The first step in bringing any food product to the market is developing the idea. You need to know what you want your product to be, how it will be different from other products on the market, and why people will buy it. You also need to understand what's required for it to be compliant with food safety standards.

When developing your product, think about what you want it to do. Are you trying to make a snack that's healthy? Or a treat that's indulgent? What are the ingredients in your product? Are they all natural? How will they affect the taste and texture of your final product?

You could hire a food scientist or a product developer to help you with recipe development, preservation of your product or the legal aspects of launching a new food product in your local market.

Ingredient Sourcing

Getting all of your ingredients together in one place so they can be used when making your product! This might seem like an easy task at first glance but there are actually many things that go into choosing ingredients for food products like yours. It may be best to start working with reputable ingredient suppliers early on in the process or work with your copacker to understand what ingredients they currently source which will help bring economies of scale to the manufacturing process later on. As a general rule of thumb, the ingredients cost price should roughly be 1/3 of your Recommended Retail Price but this will depend a lot on category margins and how complex is to manufacture your product.

Branding

Once you know what kind of food you want to make, it's time for the fun part: coming up with a name! The name should be short and easy to pronounce, but also memorable and descriptive. If possible, try not to use numbers or letters in your brand name—they can be hard for people to remember when they're trying to find out where something is sold or how much it costs at their local store.

Once you are settled on a company name and product name it is time to create the look and feel of your product. The best place to start is by creating a logo. A logo is the face of your food product. It's how your audience will recognize you, and it's how they'll start to feel connected to you.

You want a logo that reflects the quality and care that goes into making your food, so it's important to hire a designer who can really understand what you're trying to do.

Copacker

Once you've got your product idea, it's time to find a co-packer who can help make it all happen. A copacker is a company that has experience manufacturing for other brands on similar projects or producing private label manufacturing in a specific category. The best way to do this is by talking with several potential copackers and getting their quotes for production costs. It's important that you choose a copacker who understands your vision for the product (and can make sure it gets made correctly) so that they can help guide you through all of these steps!

Copackers generally will not have time to guide you through the process as they tend to get paid for their manufacturing output rather than offering advice so you could consider hiring a copacker expert to help you with this.

Feel free to contact us for a free consultation call at [email protected]

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