Where You'll Make It

The production-venue ladder from a home kitchen to a co-packer, and how to choose.

1. From home kitchen to a licensed spaceThe production-venue ladder — a home kitchen, a shared or commissary kitchen, your own leased space, and a co-packer — how to pick the rung that fits your volume and cash, and who still owns the food-safety plan and the traceability records at each one.
2. What a co-packer is, and when it makes senseWhat a co-packer does, the trade you make when you hire one — scale and a ready-made plant for margin and day-to-day control — the signals you're ready, and who still owns the food-safety plan and the traceability records once someone else runs the line.
3. Finding and vetting a co-packerHow to build a shortlist of co-packers, vet each one with a real question list, and set the relationship up in writing — starting with who owns the food-safety plan and who keeps each traceability record when someone else runs the line.
4. From a kitchen recipe to a documented, scalable processHow to turn the recipe in your head into a written spec a stranger's crew could run, spot what breaks when you scale up, tell whether your product forces a process-authority filing, sketch a shelf-life test — and name who owns the food-safety plan and the records once it's a process.