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We realize that not everyone is quite ready to outsource manufacturing.

For those companies where manufacturing with us is still a ways away, we offer Consulting Services through our staff and partners.
Here’s a list of some of the key areas we can help you with.

And, to see if The Kitchen Coop might be a good manufacturing partner for your company, please submit a brief to start the discussion.

 

Product Development

  • Recipe Refinement: For clients looking to modify a bench top recipe for any number of reasons: Ingredient substitution, flavor extensions, flavor enhancements, cost reduction. The Kitchen Coop has a network of food scientists and product formulators to assist.
  • Recipe Commercialization: When bench top recipes require manual processes that are not economical to scale, The Kitchen Coop can optimize recipes to work with our equipment to maximize throughput and yields.
  • Packaging Design: Often the edible part of the product is perfect, but the package to preserve it through distribution and get it to fly off shelves needs work.  The Kitchen Coop, working with outside designers, can identify good packaging options and refine the product to work well within those options.
  • Mechanization Implementation: While our existing equipment is flexible and broad in scope, there is often a special piece of equipment needed to optimize a process for a specific product.  The Kitchen Coop can help define, find, spec, and implement any such equipment that we might need to improve a process.

 

Marketing Support

  • Strategy Modeling: Knowing the retail and foodservice landscape, The Kitchen Coop can help young companies define their rollout strategy and plan for success.
  • Branding: The Kitchen Coop has a network of designers and branding companies to meet every budget.
  • Trade Spend: The Kitchen Coop has worked with so many start-up companies and new product launches that we can advise clients on working with brokers, distributors, and retailers.

 

Cost Modeling

  • Cost of Manufacturing Analysis: Companies always want to know how much a product costs to make per unit. Unfortunately, the per unit price (PUP) is highly dependent on the number of units being produced, in a period of time, and the number and value of resources required to make the product.  The Kitchen Coop staff can create a cost model of production and packaging processes to estimate the potential output and potential cost per unit… but only with some detailed analysis of the recipe and manufacturing processes.
  • Total Cost Analysis: In addition to the costs of manufacturing, companies often ask us to cost an entire product, including ingredients and packaging materials.  The Kitchen Coop is glad to conduct such research for our clients.

 

Is it the Right Time?

Some of the companies with whom we really want to work are not yet ready for co-manufacturing. They might be:

  • too small in scale to make outsourced manufacturing economical
  • too far from financial self-sufficiency to endure the journey
  • too unsettled in the product development process

The Kitchen Coop offers the Path to Co-Manufacturing, business and technical services for growing companies and new products.

  • Creating a Quality Standard and Food Safety Program (HACCP)
  • Developing a Cost Model to estimate current costs and target future costs with growth and improvements
  • Manufacturing using our labor, equipment, and facilities and your supervisor at a lower cost until Co-Manufacturing is economical

 

If you want to talk through your own situation, please submit a brief to start the discussion.