Contract Juice Manufacturing Versus Doing It Yourself

Synergy Food Group Operations Director, Adrian Hall explains the pros and cons of Contract Juice Manufacturing versus doing it yourself to help you decide which decision you should make and so that you can understand and find the ideal Contract Juice Manufacturing or Private Label Beverage Manufacturing partner for your company.

You’ve got a great concept, you’ve got a great product and the question is now, how are you going to get that product to market?

Really doing it yourself or doing with a quality contract juice manufacturer are your best avenues to do that and we’re going to touch on a few key points here about how you can help make that decision.

The first consideration is time.

Time is so important when you’re starting up a new business.

You’re going to be pulled every which way, you’re going to want to be doing marketing, websites, sales, social media.

If you add production into that mix, a lot of times it can become quite overwhelming, so working with a third party, like a good contract juice manufacturer is going to take that pressure off you, so you can focus on the things that you’re really good at.

That leads us to money.

Money makes the world go round and it also makes your business viable, so freeing up a lot of that money to invest in social media and marketing and sales and the things that are actually going to get your product into the hands of the end consumer is far more valuable than tying it up in holding lots of inventory and buying labels and boxes.

Working with a good contract juice manufacturer, they’re going to take a lot of that pressure off of you and that allows you to then sell more product.

That then leads us to cashflow.

In my experience, I’ve seen a lot of businesses fall over because they haven’t been able to manage cashflow.

In that initial stage of starting off a business, it can be very expensive when you’ve got rent and overheads and staff and suddenly there’s no cash to physically be able to make your own product.

Working with a third party, they’re going to assist in that process, again, freeing up your capital to invest in the things that are really important.

Working with a great contract juice manufacturer, you’re going to be able to leverage their experience and their expertise.

A good contract juice manufacturer is going to have an army of people at their disposal to help you make a really great product.

That could be a research and development team, it could be people who are experts in food safety, or mechanical engineers, who are great at getting the best out of machinery. It’s highly likely when you’re starting your own business, you don’t have that expertise at hand.

So definitely using those people to ask those questions, you’re going to get a better product and you’re going to be able to improve on what you’ve already established.

The next point we’re going to talk about is capital outlay.

You can very quickly run out of money before you’ve even made a product.

When you invest in machinery for production, machinery for packaging, then rent, water, electricity, all those things eat up into your cashflow.

A contract juice manufacturer is going to take care of all that for you and the beauty is it’s going to be at no charge.

These are costs that are already existing for them, so they’re not likely to then just charge you a tiny portion of these as part of the cost of each of the individual items that they’re making for you.

That leaves you precious money to be able to spend on getting your product into the hands of people who are going to be paying for it.

The next point that we’re going to talk about is people (or staff).

When you’re making the product by yourself, in your kitchen, doing all this product development, it’s super easy.

As you start adding more and more people into the mix, production staff, truck, drivers, food safety supervisors, the more people that you have to deal with within your own business, the more complicated it becomes and the more time it takes away from you being able to sell your product to the consumers.

A contract juice manufacturer is going to take care of all of that for you.

The beauty of working with a contract juice manufacturer, you pick up the phone, you send an email, you place your order, you get your stock, freeing up all of your valuable time to be able to just sell it to the customers who want to buy it.

Working with a great contract juice manufacturer is going to also provide you access to products, services, pricing that you may not have even thought of yourself.

A quality contract juice manufacturer is going to have great economies of scale.

What that does, is it enables you to get a better price from them, which you can either keep for yourself, or you can pass on to your end consumer.

They’re going to have services that will be of great benefit to you, that you may not have even thought of before.

I know when you’re starting off at home in your kitchen doing recipe development, the last thing on your mind are food safety certificates and HACCP documentation, or specification sheets for ingredients.

These things will be all at hand from a contract juice manufacturer to be able to then give your business a little bit more credence.

And then you’ve got access to products.

Sometimes a contract juice manufacturer might be able to get things that as a sole trader or a small business, you wouldn’t be able to get yourself.

So definitely leverage those opportunities because they’re at your fingertips.

One of the bonuses of working with a contract juice manufacturer is simply just going to be advice.

They’ve been there, they’ve done it all before. They’re making products that are similar to yours.

Otherwise you wouldn’t be working with them.

So why not leverage the experience that they’ve got in your industry and their technical expertise to help you avoid making costly mistakes.

Time, money, and effort, three of the most valuable things when you’re doing something small by yourself.

These guys are going to help alleviate those three things and give you a better product at the end of the day.

The last point that we’re going to touch on are just utilizing the technical insights of a business who’s been there and done it all before.

When you’re making your product in your kitchen at home, it can be super easy to make one or two bottles or one or two units and have it turned out perfect every single time.

When you start scaling that business and start dealing with bigger batches and bigger sizes, there’s often a thousand different things that can possibly go wrong.

A contract juice manufacturer is going to be able to look at that process, look at that recipe and pinpoint where they think things that could potentially go wrong, could go wrong and actually take that out of the mix or the equation before they’ve even made your first batch.

That’s going to save you a lot of time and a lot of mucking around and get that product perfect from day one.

So to recap…

Time, money, cashflow, their experience and their expertise, capital outlay, you’re not going to have to worry about any of that.

Staffing and people issues, having access to their products and services and pricing, utilizing their advice and utilizing their technical insights as well, that’s a lot of benefits to consider versus doing it yourself?

What will you choose?

If you’d like to talk to us at Synergy Food Group about cold pressed juice or beverages of any description, whether it be nut milk’s, nutritional products, we’d love to have a chat.

If you’ve got any questions, contact us at Synergy Food Group