Food Business Resources

Posted on November 24, 2015 by

Here you'll find some possible resources to help you with your food business. This list is just a tiny sampling of the options available; it's not meant to be comprehensive or to serve as personal endorsements. We'd love to build on it and add your endorsements, so if you have someone you want to recommend, let us know or add to the list in the comments below!

Here's a little glossary to help you navigate:

Barcodes

We have a good summary of what you need to know in our barcodes for food labels article, so take a look there. Here are some other resources as well:

ReciPal guide to food barcodes

Barcode Generator - Create a barcode graphic if you already have your codes.

GS1 US - Buy barcodes with your own prefix.

Vanity Barcodes - Have fun with your barcodes by putting them in unique designs and styles.

Co-Packers and Commercial Kitchens

We have a short article on finding a food co-packer that guides you on the high level questions to ask yourself and things to look out for as well as a some resources, books, and consultants to lean on if you want some help.

Trade shows can be very useful for finding the right manufacturer: PLMA and IFT are two.

You can try a matching service like PartnerSlate.

A couple great books on finding a co-packer are The Ultimate Guide to Co-Packing and sourcing a contract manufacturer.

If you want to hire an expert, Right Brain Consulting specializes in finding and negotiating with co-packers for all sorts of food businesses - they've done it literally thousands of times. Working with an expert like that can save you weeks of searching not to mention lots of money on the actual contractual terms you get with your co-packer.

If you're producing your own product and need a shared commercial kitchen rental there are a few good directories that are updated for the most part: Culinary Incubator and The Kitchen Door. Googling "Commercial Kitchen" plus your general area is also a great idea!

Design For Packaging - Design and Branding Agencies/Consultants

If you're looking to hire someone to help you with your brand, logo, packaging, and label design, these guys are the pros. They've done it for major brands and this can really help your product stand out on the shelves. It may not be cheap, but eventually you may need it.

Aisle 9

Atlas Branding

Britton Design - Focus on food and wine packaging and design.

Claytowne (and blog)

Jenn David Design - Focus on gourmet food and specialty brands.

Jobin Design, Inc. - A boutique graphic design studio with a focus on packaging design and branding for specialty foods.

Miller Creative, LLC - Product branding especially for food, gourmet and health and beauty products.

Packaging Diva

Design and Packaging - Marketplaces and Quotes

If you're starting out and don't have design skills, you can get great results finding a freelancer on a design marketplace or design competition site. You can choose your budget, provide inspiration and product background, and find the best fit.

99 Designs - Create competitions for design projects. Reach designers around the world. Projects Include logos, branding, and package design.

Thumbtack - Get bids from professionals in many fields, including design.

Design and Packaging - From Manufacturers/Printers

GGS Packaging Group

Planet Canit, LLC - Specialize in recyclable & reusable metal packaging.

Presentation Packaging

Design and Packaging - Tools and Software

If you're doing your own design and need the right software to do it, here are some options from the simple and free to professional grade.

Canva Design Software - Web-based, very easy to use design software that one of our customers is in love with because how easy it was to work with. It is free but has some paid features as well.

Inkscape - Free and open source full-featured vector graphics software. Comparable to Adobe Illustrator, but free. This is actually what we use for a lot of design work at ReciPal.

Illustrator - Illustrator is another vector graphics program and is the industry standard tool for design and illustration. Most designers will use Illlustrator. It costs roughly $20 per month.

Design and Packaging - Inspiration

Packaging of the World

The Dieline

Food Business Blogs, Guides, and Resources

Gredio - A fantastic food startup blog by a food startup! Advice on everything related to running a small food business from a personal, hands-on perspective. We tweet most of their articles because they're so good and thorough. They also have a great resource guide.

Specialty Food Resource

Small Food Biz - Blog posts, books, tools, and consulting services for small food businesses.

Marketing Food Online - YouTube channel with TONS of content from a successful food entrepreneur. Covers topics like starting a home food business, selling food online, food trucks, and just about everything else. All in video form!

Nutrition and Testing - Lab Services

ReciPal offers lab testing through our partner lab at discounted rates - it's a full service lab for nutrition, pathogen, allergen, and shelf-life testing. Just reach out with questions.

We also recommend reading our post on Shelf Life Testing for more information on that.

Nutrition and Testing - Software

ReciPal Nutrition Label Software - We couldn't help ourselves. It's the easiest and most affordable nutrition labeling software and our customers love it. You can also set up your ingredient lists in a snap, allergens, hire an expert if you need help, do product costing, and inventory management.

Nutrition and Testing - The Rules

ReciPal Blog - We have a ton of information on our blog, which you can search (on the right hand side), so feel free to take advantage of that. We try to simplify things much more than the FDA documentation, which can be tough to wade through.

FDA Food Labeling Guide - High level guide and Q&A for food labeling from the FDA.

FDA Docs for Ingredient Lists

FDA Docs for Determining Serving Sizes

CFIA (Canada) Labeling Rules

CFIA (Canada) Docs for Determining Serving Sizes

USDA Foods Database - this is part of what we use at ReciPal.

Packaging - Baskets

We have a great 3 part series on figuring out your food packaging, so take a look there as well as these resources.

Baskets, paper, and wood packaging.

Wald Imports Ltd.

Willow Specialties

Packaging - Flexible Packaging

We have a great 3 part series on figuring out your food packaging, so take a look there as well as these resources.

Flexible packaging includes foil and paper bags, stand-up pouches, flat pouches, coffee bags. This covers most of the snack packaging you see today.

Pack Plus

PBFY Flexible Packaging

Revere FlexPak (Part of The Revere Group, which also includes Glerup Packaging for specialty foods and confectionery.)

Robyn Packaging Co.

Tenka Flexible Packaging

Packaging - Glass, Plastic, Jars

This one is pretty self-explanatory :)

Bottle Solutions - Also offer printing and labeling services.

Bruni Glass Packaging Inc.

Burch Bottle & Packing Inc.

Olshen's Bottle Supply Co.

Packaging - Metal and Tin

This one is pretty self-explanatory too :)

Allstate Can Corporation

Independent Can Company

J.L. Clark

Packaging - Paper and Cardboard

Boxes, containers, wrapping materials, bakery bags, tubes, basically anything made of paper or cardboard.

The BoxMaker

Carton Service

Custom Paper Tubes Inc.

MOD-PAC Corporation

Paper Bag Manufacturers, Inc.

Paper Mart

Qualita Paper Products

Zenith Specialty Bag Company

Plastic, Rigid and Molded

Plastic bottles, jars, cylinders, boxes - from growlers to supplements to nut jars. Anything plastic.

Alpha Packaging

Berlin Packaging

Billie-Ann Plastics Packaging Corporation

CCW Products, Inc.

Consolidated Container Company

Packaging - Specialty

When it doesn't quite fit in another category.

aspecialtybox.com

Chocolat-Chocolat Inc.

Wilpack Packaging - Specialize in cup packaging (e.g. yogurt).

Packaging - Temperature Controlled

For when you have to keep your products cool en route or on the shelf.

Polar Tech Industries - Temperature safe shipping and transport packaging.

Providence Packaging - Insulated Shipping Containers, Reflective Foil Bubble and Foam (Pouches, Mailers, and Box Liners), Gel Ice Packs, Block Ice Packs, and Insulated Pallet Covers.

R.N.C. Industries, Inc. - Cold chain shipping and quality packaging.

Packaging - Wood

Dufeck Wood Products - Wood boxes (oval, square, rectangle), display crates, shelves and trays, and custom packaging.

Packaging Organizations and Associations

Contract Packaging Association

Institute of Packaging Professionals

Packaging Association of Canada

Printing Labels and Packaging

We have a good overview post highlighting the options for printing your food labels, whether it's on labels or directly on your packaging. It covers the best options when you're just getting started, growing, buying label printers, outsourcing printing, and all the joys of printing labels. For just the resources, see below.

Printing - Custom Label Printing

These companies usually will help walk you through the printing process and decide what's best as far as materials, help you design your label (or recommend a designer), and finally get very high quality labels printed for you. (Most larger packaging companies handle printing too.)

BlueLabel Digital

Inland Packaging

Label Value

Lightning Labels

Presto Labels

Richmark Label

The Label Company

Valley Forge Tape and Label

Niagara Label

Printing - Do It Yourself Print Sites

Upload or design your label and they'll mail you the labels.

Print runner

UPrinting

You Print Labels

Printing - Printed Packaging

When you want to print directly on your packaging. The most professional option, but expensive for shorter runs.

ClearView Bag Company

Flexo

Pacific Bag

PBFY

Roastar

Printers, Supplies, Tools

Quick Label

Rollo Printer

Afinia Label

BarCodes Inc.

Label Value

Met-Speed Label

Online Labels

Primera Technology

Weber Labels

World Label

Creating a Website

Creating a basic website for your food business has never been easier. There are tons of free and cheap options that are easy to use with drag and drop interfaces and great-looking templates that are professional and effective. You just have to decide on the images and copy. Unless you need something very custom, we recommend using one of these rather than hiring a web designer or developer.

Shopify - one of the original and easiest e-commerce enabled websites.

SquareSpace - simple static websites as well as e-commerce.

Wix - similar to SquareSpace.

And that about wraps it up! Leave a comment or chat us in the bottom right corner if you have any personal recommendations or resources to share.


About Lev Berlin

Lev Berlin ReciPal SlantShack Author Bio

Lev Berlin is the founder & CEO of ReciPal. Having previously been a founder of SlantShack Jerky, he needed nutrition labels and simple tools to start and run the business. He's read the FDA food labeling code countless times in the process of creating ReciPal and helping small food businesses with their labels. He's reviewed and created thousands of food labels, and been a mentor and guest speaker at food incubators, food business courses, and regulatory conferences, like Brooklyn Foodworks and ICE.

After graduating from Princeton with an engineering degree, Lev was a management consultant, then founder or early employee at half a dozen startups. He loves nothing more than helping other small businesses get off the ground and achieve their goals.


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