This is for founders who want to know what it costs per pound to have a co-packer make their product. The short answer: almost no co-packer publishes one number, because the price depends on your recipe, your package, and your run. Your number is the whole cost of a run (the co-packer's fee, ingredients, packaging, one-time costs, freight and storage) divided by the pounds of finished product it makes. Below is how to do that math, which pound to count, and what the few co-packers who publish prices actually list.
Which pound? There are at least three
"Per pound" sounds exact until you ask: a pound of what? A run has pounds going in (ingredients), pounds coming out (finished product), and the net weight printed on each package. They are rarely the same number.
Coffee shows it clearly. Royal Coffee, a green coffee importer, gives an example of a batch that goes in at 100 pounds and "weighs roughly 85 pounds once it's finished," and writes that very light roasts "will likely lose only about 10% of their green weight, but roasts taken well past the second crack may lose as much as 25%." So a roasting fee charged per pound of green coffee and one charged per pound of roasted coffee are different prices. Birch Coffee, a New York roaster, writes that toll roasting fees "are typically charged per pound of finished coffee."
Meat is the same. A Penn State Extension example uses a steer whose hanging carcass weight is "58 percent of its live weight," then adds a processing fee and divides by 65% to get to cut meat, and concludes that "your cost per pound will go up with every step from live animal to cut and packaged product." The price sheet of Swiss Meat & Sausage Co., a Missouri meat processor that makes private label products, lists its USDA beef slaughter fee as ".22 lb dressed wt/min. $140.00/hd": priced on dressed weight, not live weight, with a per-head minimum.
The pound to divide by is the net weight on your label. For the packaged foods it covers, the FDA rule on net quantity, 21 CFR 101.7, says the declaration is "in terms of weight if the food is solid, semisolid, or viscous," and must reveal "the quantity of food in the package exclusive of wrappers and other material packed therewith". So the jar, the bag and the box do not count. If your product is a liquid, the same rule says the statement is "in terms of fluid measure," so for a drink you divide by fluid ounces or gallons instead of pounds. (The rule allows the other measure where there is "a firmly established general consumer usage and trade custom" of using it.) If you make a meat or poultry product, confirm with your processor which labeling rule applies and what weight its prices are based on.
What co-packers actually publish
Few of the co-packer websites we read publish prices. These are the ones we found, each in the company's own words, read on October 28, 2026:
| Company | What it publishes | Read it as |
|---|---|---|
| Minimus Products, California | Minimum run: "It is $2500 for a given project." | A minimum in dollars, not pounds or units |
| ProtoPackers, which runs liquid batches by the gallon | Trial runs "Starting at : $ 479", "Ingredients not included in price"; co-packing "Programs from : $ 799" with a "1 - 500 Gallon Batch Size" | Starting prices; the page shows only "Copyright 2023", so they may not be current |
| Byler Canning Co., Pennsylvania | For private label of its own products: "Minimum Order: 20 cases per product" and "Label Design Starting Fee: $125 per label" | A label design fee on top of the product |
| Swiss Meat & Sausage Co., Missouri | A "Value Added Processing Costs" sheet dated 1/2/2025: a price beside each product (for example "Hot Dogs" at 2.75) in "100# min. batches", without printing the unit, one-time label fees such as "50.00/ea" for set up labels and "$200.00/ea" for a multi-ingredient approval submitted to USDA, "Nutritional Analysis $150.00", and lab analysis "$150.00-$1200.00" depending on the test | Ask what each price is per and what it includes; one-time costs can be large next to a small first batch |
| Birch Coffee, New York | Says toll roasting fees "are typically charged per pound of finished coffee", and gives "custom quotes based on your volume" | Per pound, but no number published |
Notice what is missing. Only the meat processor prices each product, and its sheet does not say whether those prices are per pound or what they include. None of them gives a price per pound of finished product, with ingredients and packaging, that you could compare across plants. That is why you build your own.
Example: turning a quote into a cost per pound
Exampleevery number in this section is an assumption, made up to show the math. It is not a market price.
Say you make a granola in 12 ounce bags, and a co-packer quotes a first run of 2,000 bags:
| Line on the quote | Example amount |
|---|---|
| Co-packer fee | $1.10 a bag |
| Ingredients | $1.40 a bag |
| Packaging (bag and label) | $0.45 a bag |
| One-time setup and testing | $1,500 |
| Freight and storage | $600 |
- Total the run. 2,000 bags times $2.95 a bag ($1.10 + $1.40 + $0.45) is $5,900. Add $1,500 and $600: $8,000.
- Cost per bag. $8,000 divided by 2,000 bags is $4.00 a bag.
- Pounds per bag. 12 ounces divided by 16 ounces in a pound is 0.75 pounds.
- Cost per pound. $4.00 divided by 0.75 is about $5.33 per pound of finished granola.
On the second run the $1,500 one-time cost drops out: $6,500 for 2,000 bags is $3.25 a bag, or about $4.33 a pound. Your first run is almost always your most expensive per pound, which is worth knowing before you set a wholesale price from it.
Now the yield step. 2,000 bags of 12 ounces is 1,500 pounds of finished granola. If you buy ingredients by the pound and the co-packer tells you to expect a 3% loss in the run (an assumed figure; ask yours for theirs), you need about 1,546 pounds of mix, not 1,500. That is the same yield arithmetic as the coffee and meat examples above: divide by the share that survives.
And to compare a fee quoted on pounds in with one quoted on pounds out, divide by the yield. Example: a roasting fee of $2.00 per pound of green coffee, with the 15% loss in Royal Coffee's example, is about $2.35 per pound of roasted coffee.
Published minimums are per run, product or project, not per month
A brand that wrote to us asked whether co-packers set monthly minimums all year or per run. In what the co-packers we read publish, the minimum is set per batch, per product, per project or per order, and none is per month. Swiss Meat & Sausage Co. lists "100# min. batches". Brooks Bottling Company in New York writes that its "minimum order quantities are 1800 gallons per sku, equating to 1200 cases of 16 ounce (packed 12) or 1600 cases of 12 ounce (packed 12)". Those add up: 1,800 gallons is 230,400 fluid ounces, and so is 1,200 cases of twelve 16 ounce bottles. Minimus sets its minimum per project. Byler sets one per product for private label, and "$750 per order" for unlabeled products.
Our directory shows the same pattern. Of the 898 co-packers whose websites we have read, 27 mention a minimum order, and 19 of those give a number. None of the 27 is worded per month or per year (as recorded in our directory on October 28, 2026). That does not mean no co-packer asks for a yearly volume in a contract, so ask: "Is that minimum per run, per product, or a commitment across the year?" Our post on real co-packer minimums shows how to turn gallons, cases and pieces into finished units.
What to do next
- Ask every co-packer for a line-by-line quote for the same run size and package. Our request for quote template lists the lines, and our guide to what a co-packer costs explains each one.
- Ask two questions the quote may not answer: what yield or loss to expect, and whether any price is per pound in or per pound out.
- Put each quote into the co-packer cost calculator with your weight per unit in ounces. It shows your landed cost per unit and your cost per pound, so quotes line up side by side.
If you would rather we find the plants for you, send a free match request with your product, package size and first run.
Every price above is quoted as published on October 28, 2026, and companies change their prices. Confirm the current number with the company before you plan around it.
The CoPacker Index team
Sources
- Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), 21 CFR 101.7, Declaration of net quantity of contents, read October 28, 2026.
- Penn State Extension, How Much Should You Charge? Pricing Your Meat Cuts, read October 28, 2026.
- Royal Coffee, Understanding Roast Yield and Loss, and its homepage for what the company does, read October 28, 2026.
- Birch Coffee, What Is Toll Roasting, read October 28, 2026.
- Swiss Meat & Sausage Co., Value Added Processing Costs (dated 1/2/2025), linked from its private labeling page, read October 28, 2026.
- ProtoPackers, Capabilities, read October 28, 2026.
- Minimus Products, Co-Packing FAQ, read October 28, 2026.
- Byler Canning Co., Private Label, read October 28, 2026.
- Brooks Bottling Company, homepage, read October 28, 2026.
- CoPacker Index directory counts (898 reviewed listings, 27 that mention a minimum, 19 with a number, none worded per month or per year), from blog_numbers.py, October 28, 2026.