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The words your co-packer uses, explained properly
Nobody teaches you this vocabulary before your first quote arrives. These are the terms that actually change what you pay and when you get your product.
Money
COGS Everything it costs to produce one unit of finished product, before you spend anything on selling it. Read → Landed cost What a unit costs once it has physically arrived where you sell it, including freight and handling. Read → Tolling fee What a contract manufacturer charges to turn your ingredients into finished units — labour, line time and overhead, but not materials. Read →
Planning
Days of cover How many days your current stock will last at the rate you are currently selling. Read → Lead time The total elapsed time from deciding to make something to having it available to sell. Read → MOQ The smallest run a manufacturer or supplier will accept, usually set by what makes their setup time worth doing. Read → Overage Extra ingredient ordered above the recipe amount, to cover what gets lost in handling and processing. Read → Safety stock The inventory you hold on purpose to survive being wrong about demand or late on a run. Read →
Production
Allergen changeover The extended, validated clean required when a line moves from a product containing a major allergen to one that does not. Read → Batch sheet The document the floor works from and signs: what to weigh, in what order, what to check, and what actually happened. Read → Bill of materials The full list of what goes into one unit — every ingredient and every piece of packaging, with quantities. Read → Changeover The time a line is out of action between two different products, for cleaning, tooling and getting back into spec. Read → Co-packer A factory that makes and packs your product for you, to your recipe, under your brand. Read → Line time The hours a production line is committed to your run, which is what a co-manufacturer is really selling you. Read → Scrap rate The proportion of units made that could not be sold, usually because they failed a check. Read → Yield How many saleable units you actually got, against how many the batch should theoretically have made. Read →
Quality
BRCGS A GFSI-recognised food safety standard, originally British and now used internationally, common wherever UK and EU retailers are involved. Read → HACCP A food safety system built around identifying the specific points in a process where a hazard can be controlled, and proving you controlled them. Read → Lot code The identifier printed on a unit that ties it back to the exact batch, date and ingredients it came from. Read → SQF A food safety certification scheme recognised by GFSI, and the one most large US retailers expect a manufacturing site to hold. Read → Traceability Being able to follow any unit backwards to its ingredients and forwards to its customers, quickly and on demand. Read →
The vocabulary is the easy part.
Keeping the plan, the recipe and the cost in one place both companies can see is the hard part. That is what NextBatch does.
No card. Set up your first product in about ten minutes.