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Jam and preserves
All Containers›Shop by use case›Jam and preserves›Beyond the jar›Making it for someone else's brandShop all jams and preserves →
Beyond the jar

Making it for someone else's brand

By Dwight Davis, Founder

Updated

On this page5
Somebody will ask for your jam with their name on it. It is good business and the thing to understand first is that the label still has to name whoever is responsible for the food, and the regulatory position does not transfer with the branding.

What the label has to say

Whose brand is on the front changes nothing about what the back has to carry. The regulatory obligations follow the product and the producer, not the name, which is the detail most often got wrong in a first private label conversation.

The name and address of the manufacturer, packer or distributor. A private label product carries the brand owner's name as the distributor and still has to identify who is responsible, which is a conversation to have before artwork rather than after.

What it is worth

The economics are different from your own line in both directions, and worth working out before quoting rather than after. You lose the margin that comes with your own brand and you gain volume that is predictable, which is genuinely valuable in a business whose input arrives once a year.

  • Volume that is committed rather than hoped for, which is what makes a fruit purchase safe.
  • No marketing cost, no stall, no shipping.
  • A lower price per jar, usually close to wholesale.

What to agree first

Agree these in writing before the first run, while everybody is still enthusiastic. Each one is easy to settle now and expensive to settle after a season of fruit has been bought against an order.

  1. Whether your exemption allows it at all. Supplying a reseller is usually outside a cottage food exemption.
  2. The specification, in the same terms as a copack: ratio, target reading, jar, fill weight, process.
  3. Whose lot code, and whether you can trace a complaint.
  4. What happens if a batch misses the standard and cannot carry the name jam.

The one that ends the conversation early

There is one question that settles whether a private label arrangement is possible at all, and asking it in the first conversation saves everybody weeks. It is not about price and it is not about volume, and a buyer who has done this before will expect you to raise it.

Wholesale permission. If you are operating under a home-kitchen exemption, this is almost always the thing that stops it, and it is better found out in the first phone call: selling wholesale.

References

21 CFR 101, Food labeling. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21.
Michigan State University Extension. Selling Safe Food: The Michigan Cottage Food Law (E3363), and related MSU Extension guidance on which preserved products the law covers. canr.msu.edu
Penn State Extension. Food for Profit: Commercial Production of Jams, Jellies and Fruit Butters. extension.psu.edu
Written from federal regulation and published extension guidance, not from a laboratory. A standard of identity is a federal floor and your state adds to it. Anything here is a starting point for a conversation with your state department of agriculture, not a determination that you comply.