Should you make sauce under someone else's name, or put your name on a stock sauce?

Private label runs in two directions, and the answer differs for each. Making sauce under someone else's name (a restaurant, brewery, shop or event) can fill spare kitchen time and is worth doing if the price covers your full cost plus margin and the order fits your existing scheduled process and filings. Putting your name on a stock sauce made by a plant gets you to market fast, but you own a label instead of a recipe. This page compares both, shows how to price them, and explains what is known about whose filings cover the product, which is a question to put to FDA in writing.

The two directions side by side

Making sauce under someone else's name

A restaurant wants its wing sauce in bottles. A brewery wants a beer-mash hot sauce for its taproom. A shop wants a house brand. These orders are attractive because the buyer brings the sales, but they come with the full weight of being the processor.

Your filings carry the product

Under 21 CFR 108.25, the commercial processor registers its establishment with FDA and files a scheduled process for each acidified food in each container size [1]. If the buyer's sauce is your existing formula in your existing bottle with a different label, ask your process authority, and FDA at LACF@FDA.HHS.GOV, whether your current filing covers it. If the buyer wants changes (their beer in place of some vinegar, a fruit, a different bottle size), treat it as a new product: it needs a scheduled process from a qualified process authority (21 CFR 114.83) and its own filing before you pack it [1][2]. The University of Georgia's acidified food manual is blunt about this for its own approvals: any change to the recipe or processing voids the approval [3]. The changes that usually trigger refiling are listed on when to refile.

Your batch records, pH logs and coding rules apply to their bottles exactly as they do to yours, including the 3-year record retention in 21 CFR 114.100(e) [2].

Their label, your responsibility

The buyer usually designs the label, but you are the one putting it on a filled bottle. Check it against federal requirements before you print: statement of identity, net contents, ingredients in descending order, allergens, and the name and place of business, which has its own wording rules when the named company did not make the product. All of those are set out on what a hot sauce label must say. Make sure the lot code on their bottle ties to your batch record, because a complaint will come to the brand on the label and then to you.

Pricing it

Price private label work as wholesale with a production surcharge, never as a favor. Start from your real cost per bottle (ingredients, packaging, labor, kitchen time and a share of fixed costs), then add:

• Setup for their run: label changeover, a separate batch record, any test batch.
• Their packaging, if you buy it, plus the cash you tie up holding it.
• A minimum order that makes the changeover worth your time.
• Margin. Private label buyers expect wholesale pricing, so your wholesale floor is the floor here too. For what one maker reports, the owner of a small hot sauce company said in a 2026 Reddit AMA that his own rule is "at least double your cost" for wholesale, and that his lowest wholesale price leaves about $1 profit per bottle [4]. Set yours from your own cost stack, not his.

Work the numbers on the price by channel calculator, and see pricing for the full cost stack.

Put it in writing

Even a small private label order needs a short agreement covering who owns the recipe, the price and payment terms, the minimum order, who approves the label, and who pays if product has to be pulled. The clauses are the same ones a brand negotiates with a copacker, seen from the other side; see copacking contracts. Tell your insurer, too, since your product will carry another company's name.

Putting your name on a stock sauce

Some copackers offer house formulas that any brand can bottle under its own label, sometimes called white label. This is the fastest path to a shelf: the plant already has the formula, the scheduled process, the filing and the equipment.

What you get and what you give up

• You get speed. The plant already registers its establishment and files processes for the products it makes there [1]. Whether its filing covers the same formula under your label is a question FDA has not answered on its registration page, so ask the plant to show you the filing, and ask FDA at LACF@FDA.HHS.GOV. You supply a label and an order.
• You give up the recipe. The formula usually belongs to the plant, so you cannot take the sauce elsewhere if prices rise or the plant closes. Oklahoma State's co-packer fact sheet warns that a plant shutdown leaves the brand without product [5].
• You give up uniqueness. Ask whether the same formula is sold to other brands, and whether you can buy exclusivity in your region or channel.

Questions to ask the plant

1. Is this formula sold to other brands, and can I get exclusivity?
2. Can I adjust heat, salt or sweetness, and does any change need a new scheduled process?
3. Who holds the process filing for my label, and can I see it and the scheduled process? (Confirm the arrangement with FDA at LACF@FDA.HHS.GOV.)
4. What is the minimum run per label, and do you print labels or do I?
5. If I leave, can I buy the formula?

Then compare the per-bottle quote the same way you would compare a custom copack quote; the comparison sheet on working with a copacker works for both.

Your label still has to be right

You are the brand on the shelf, so the label is yours to get right even though you didn't make the sauce: identity, net contents, ingredients and allergens exactly as the plant makes it, and the name and place of business worded for a product made by someone else. The federal labeling page covers each element. Ask the plant for its ingredient statement and allergen information in writing, and ask to be told before any ingredient or supplier changes.

Which one fits you

• You have a licensed kitchen with empty hours and a buyer with steady volume: make sauce for them, at a price built from your full cost.
• You have an audience but no recipe, no time and no kitchen: a stock sauce can test demand cheaply. Plan to move to your own formula if it sells.
• You have a recipe people love: keep it yours. Pay a copacker to make your formula, and protect it with an NDA and a contract.

Taking your own formula to a plant

If the stock route tests well, or you want a product only you can sell, the next step is finding a plant to make your own formula and comparing quotes, which is the subject of working with a copacker.

References

1. US Food and Drug Administration, *Establishment Registration and Process Filing for Acidified and Low-Acid Canned Foods (LACF)*, content current May 29, 2025. https://www.fda.gov/food/registration-food-facilities-and-other-submissions/establishment-registration-process-filing-acidified-and-low-acid-canned-foods-lacf
2. eCFR, 21 CFR Part 114, Acidified Foods, up to date as of October 20, 2026. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-114
3. University of Georgia Extension, Mohan, *Step-by-Step Guidelines for Processing, Manufacturing, and Regulatory Approval of Acidified Foods in Georgia* (B 1455), November 2015. https://secure.caes.uga.edu/extension/publications/files/pdf/B%201455_1.PDF
4. r/HotSauces (read via public mirror), "AMA: I run a small batch hot sauce company," 2026. https://twt.omada.cafe/r/HotSauces/comments/1n06ckh/ama_i_run_a_small_batch_hot_sauce_company
5. Oklahoma State University Extension, Holcomb, *Food Processing Using a Co-Packer* (FAPC-106), June 2017. https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/food-processing-using-a-co-packer.html