How to sell canned soup to stores

Write the recipe down with exact amounts

Cost, price, nutrition and the label are all worked out from this. Write it in the units you actually use; ShelfStep converts for the label. What matters is that someone else could make the same batch from what is written.

Decide how it is kept: on a shelf, in the fridge or frozen

The planned storage helps the reviewer assess the process, shelf life and packaging.

In the plan: It decides which rules you follow.

Find out where you are allowed to make it for sale

This finds out whether the state’s rules allow making this in a home kitchen or point to a commercial one — and that changes the cost and the timeline of everything after it. It is much cheaper to find out now than after buying packaging.

In the plan: Your state's home-kitchen rules, in its own words. Whether they cover your product is for your state's agency to say.

Have the pH and water activity of a finished batch measured

These measurements give your reviewer information about the batch; they do not establish safety or storage conditions on their own.

In the plan: The two numbers the acidified-food rules name. Measured on the finished product, once it has settled.

Get a Process Authority's letter on how it is made safe

Ask a qualified reviewer which process and storage conditions your product needs. This is where you ask someone qualified, a Process Authority, to put in writing how the product is made safe. Buyers, insurers and inspectors may ask for that document, and it cannot be obtained after the fact for product you have already sold.

In the plan: Needs the pH first. Their letter sets out the process they ask you to hold to, and the storage line for your label.

Look into FDA registration

Registration is how FDA knows your facility exists; the plan is what an inspector or a buyer’s audit asks to see. Both are far easier to do now than during either.

In the plan: Look into registration with FDA. Any filing your Process Authority letter names belongs here too.

Choose the container and what seals it

The container decides the label size, how many fit a case, what shipping costs, and whether the process authority’s answer still holds. Changing it later re-opens all four.

In the plan: How it will be packed, what will seal it and what one will cost. Not sure yet is an answer.

Shortlist three co-packers or commercial kitchens

Three quotes, not one. Minimum runs vary enormously between kitchens, and the first one that says yes is rarely the one whose minimum matches the size of your first order.

In the plan: Do this even if you make it yourself today. Minimum run, lead time and rough price are what tell you whether you can grow.

Work out what one batch, and one unit, costs to make

Cost per unit is the number every price is built on. Guessing it is how makers end up selling at a loss at wholesale and only finding out a year in.

Set up lot codes and a recall plan

A lot code is how you would find every jar from one bad run. Buyers ask whether you can, and “yes, and here is the drill we ran” is a very different answer from “probably”.

In the plan: The code goes on your first real batch. Decide it before that batch is made.

Make a first full-size batch

The first full-size run is where the recipe meets reality — yield, timing, equipment, what actually fits in the pot. Better to find the gap on a batch you planned than on one you have already sold.

In the plan: One full-size run with its lot code and best-by date. It is the first batch you could sell.

Get barcodes

Grocers scan; no barcode, no shelf. Codes come from GS1 and are tied to your company, so borrowed or resold codes cause problems at the retailer rather than at your desk.

In the plan: A store scans a barcode. Each size and flavour needs its own.

Draft the label with everything it has to say

The label is the most-inspected surface of your product, and reprints are expensive. Getting the required elements right before the print run costs far less than a sticker over a mistake.

In the plan: Needs the storage line from your Process Authority letter and your UPC.

Set the wholesale and shelf price from the cost

Retail price is not your cost doubled. Working it forward — cost, then wholesale, then shelf price — tells you whether this product survives a grocer’s margin before you pitch one.

In the plan: From the batch cost, not a guess.

Sell it at a market before you scale

A market day is the cheapest honest test there is: do strangers buy it, at your price, without you standing there explaining it? It also produces the sales numbers a buyer will ask you for.

Get product liability insurance

Most retailers want a certificate naming them before they will write a first purchase order. It is also what stands between one bad batch and your own money.

In the plan: Ask the venue or the buyer what cover they require. Record the policy once it is bound.

Make the one-page sheet a buyer reads

A buyer decides in under a minute, from one page: what it is, what it costs them, what it sells for, case pack, lead time. Without that page the conversation stalls on questions you could have answered up front.

In the plan: Needs the finished label, the case pack and the wholesale price.

Name your first three stores

Naming three real stores turns “get into retail” into calls you can make this week. Small local grocers decide faster, and they teach you what the bigger chains will ask for later.