One thing we love about our position in the food and beverage industry is that we get to work with many different types of businesses. Whether it be grocery stores, distilleries, food producers, or raw material suppliers, we get to see the industry from many points of view, and often on both sides of a working relationship.
This is especially true when it comes to contract manufacturing. Brands and co-manufacturers often want the same thing, but they bring different priorities, constraints, and assumptions into the relationship. Sensory work can help make those expectations more concrete.
What is contract manufacturing?
Simply put, contract manufacturing, or co-manufacturing, is a form of collaboration where two companies work together to produce a product. In the right situation, it allows businesses to streamline expertise, equipment, and resources to solve each other's problems.
For brands, contract manufacturing can provide:
- Reduced capital expenditure: avoiding costly or risky investments in facilities and equipment.
- Access to expertise: leveraging specialized knowledge, production experience, and technology.
- Scalability: adjusting production more easily as demand changes.
For co-manufacturers, these relationships can provide:
- Increased revenue streams: diversifying income by offering manufacturing services.
- Optimized facility utilization: making better use of existing equipment, labor, and production space.
- Economies of scale: increasing production volume to reduce per-unit costs.
The challenges of contract manufacturing
As is true with many relationships, you need to be aligned to be successful. Both parties typically feel good at the start when contracts are being negotiated, but the two sides can start to drift afterward.
The biggest source of variability is often the product itself. Brands create variability by tweaking product requirements, while manufacturers need to meet flavor specifications and maintain consistent product quality over the duration of a contract.
These are normal issues that need to be handled, but without strong alignment and good communication, they can become much bigger problems down the road.
Tips for contract manufacturing success
Every co-manufacturing situation is a little different, but there are a few sensory and product-quality questions we look at when diagnosing problems:
- Production fit: each co-manufacturer has unique strengths, and different products have different needs. When those two things are not aligned, unexpected issues can show up.
- Clear flavor targets and success criteria: this is a good time to be precise and well documented with your flavor profiles. Collaborative tasting sessions with tangible examples can go a long way toward closing communication gaps.
- QC checks: establish a clear process for verifying product quality and consistency throughout production. This may involve initial batch tastings, spot checks, and ongoing monitoring by the contract facility.
- Proactive reaction plans: outline procedures for addressing out-of-spec batches and establish decision-making guidelines up front. Issues can be resolved faster when everyone already knows the plan.
Use sensory work to keep teams aligned
Contract manufacturing succeeds when both sides have a shared understanding of what the product should be, what changes matter, and what to do when something starts to drift. That shared understanding is easier to maintain when flavor targets, reference samples, and quality control checks are part of the operating rhythm.
For teams managing multiple partners, products, or production locations, structured tasting software can help keep sensory data, product expectations, and decision history organized.