Selling wholesale

Wholesale is the obvious growth path and it is the one that changes your regulatory position, your packaging and your pricing all at once.

It probably ends your exemption

Most cottage food regimes cover direct-to-consumer sales only. A single wholesale order commonly takes you outside the exemption entirely and into food facility registration and preventive controls.

That is not a reason to avoid wholesale. It is a reason to know it before the first order rather than after, because the first wholesale account usually arrives as an opportunity rather than as a decision.

What a buyer will ask for

A sell sheet with case configuration and case price. A lot code on every jar. Tamper evidence, frequently as a line on a vendor form rather than a conversation. Product liability insurance, often at a named minimum. And increasingly a specification sheet: ingredients, allergens, shelf life and the standards you buy to.

None of that is difficult and all of it takes longer to assemble than the buyer will wait if you start when they ask.

The margin has to be there first

Wholesale means selling at roughly half your retail price, and your cost base is dominated by packaging that does not get cheaper because the buyer is a shop.

So the test is whether the product is profitable at the wholesale number, not whether the order is large. A producer who accepts a wholesale account that works only at retail margin has bought themselves a great deal of work at a loss.

Which accounts are worth having

Independent grocers, delis, butchers and cookshops, where your story is an asset and the buyer is the owner. A single shop that reorders steadily is worth more than a chain trial that ends in a return.

Be careful with accounts that want exclusivity, want you to fund promotions, or want terms that leave you financing their inventory. At your scale those are the accounts that consume the capital you needed for stock.

References