You have outgrown your co-packer, and you are ready to move. The one you started with was small enough to make mistakes alongside you. They learned your product while you learned your business, and the rough edges were survivable because you were both small.

Then the markets expand. New retailers, new regions, bigger volumes. And expansion does not forgive rough edges the way a first year does. What you need now is a co-packer with the rigor and the process you did not need on day one. So what do you do?

We've got you. Today we want to show you the co-packer checklist we use to pre-screen a facility before you even try to call them, and then evaluate whether they actually fit your product and your volumes. We have run this screen with operators at every size, from a first production run to a facility switch at scale, and the structure holds the whole way up.

And here's the best part: you can feed this entire article to your AI agent and ask it to rebuild the checklist around your product, which it probably already knows by heart. The prompt is near the bottom, ready to paste.

Why a Search Is the Wrong Move

The reason a co-packer search drags on is that you are searching at all. You cast wide, get a few plants on the phone, and find out on the third or fourth call that the same things keep ending it: their minimum order is bigger than your forecast, they are too far to make freight work, or they simply do not make your kind of product. You learn the disqualifiers one expensive call at a time.

So flip it. You are not hunting for the co-packer that works. You are screening out the ones that cannot make your product, before you spend a single call on them. That is the difference between a search and a filter, and it is the whole idea behind this file.

Who This Is For

You are choosing your next co-packer because you have outgrown the first one. Your volumes or your markets have grown past what the original facility can comfortably run, and your line may be specialized (gluten-free, organic, allergen-controlled, kosher, or small-batch), the kind a lot of plants decline on the first call. You do not have a procurement person doing this for you. And you have heard "we can probably figure that out" from a facility that clearly could not, more than once.

If that is you, this turns a months-long search into an afternoon of screening.

What's Inside the File

A five-tab Excel workbook. Each tab has one job, and they run in order. If you are handing this article to an AI agent, read this section as the blueprint, it describes every part well enough to rebuild.

Read Me

The user manual lives inside the file: the five-step setup, the six-reason disqualification taxonomy, and the two failure modes. You do not have to come back to this newsletter to run it.

Pre-Screen (6 Gates)

Six questions you ask before you send anyone your full brief. Each one has a kill criteria, an answer that ends it on the spot. The six gates screen for: (1) experience with your product type, (2) the certifications you require, (3) minimum order quantities against your forecast, (4) your packaging, labeling, and coding format, (5) willingness to run a paid trial, and (6) a ballpark all-in cost. Most of your list dies right here, and that is the design working.

Validation Checklist

For the survivors only, a 26-point due-diligence check across five areas: facility and certifications, production capability, ingredient and raw-material handling, quality control and compliance, and logistics and fulfillment. Every item is tagged Must-Have or Important. A Must-Have at Fail is a no.

Vendor Tracker

One row per candidate, with the status and the reason it landed there. We filled in ten worked-example vendors so you can see the screen working: ten candidates in, three worth a real call out.

Scoring Guide

The shared language for the whole file: Pass, Concern, Fail, Pending, and a Go, Conditional Go, No Go decision framework, so a "maybe" never sits there undefined.

How to Run It

  1. Read the Read Me first. Two minutes. Read the six-reason taxonomy so you know what you are screening for before you start.

  2. Pre-Screen your whole list. Put every candidate through the six gates. Be ruthless here. Any kill-criteria answer on the first four gates is a stop. You are trying to shrink the list, not be fair to it.

  3. Carry the survivors to Validation. Only the candidates that cleared the gates earn the 26-point check. This is your real diligence call now, not a cold one.

  4. Score with the guide. Mark each item Pass, Concern, or Fail. A Must-Have at Fail ends it. Write any Concern's mitigation plan in the Notes column.

  5. Decide in the Vendor Tracker. Set each vendor's status and write the one-line reason. When you are done, you should be looking at three to five names worth a real conversation, and a documented reason for everyone you cut.

Write the reason down even when it feels obvious. After ten rows you stop guessing and start seeing the pattern, and you walk into the next call already asking the questions that matter.

Two Ways This Goes Wrong

You skip the Pre-Screen and go straight to diligence. The 26-point check takes real time. Run it on everyone and you have just rebuilt the twenty-call problem with extra steps. The gates exist to protect your calendar. Use them first.

You treat the status column as notes to self. "Seemed nice, follow up" is not a reason. "MOQ at 2.5x our forecast" is. The tracker only pays off when every cut has a named, comparable reason, because that is what turns twenty scattered calls into one pattern you can actually see.

Download It

The file is public. Download the Co-Packer Vetting Checklist and run it this week: vantelira.com/toolkit/copacker-checklist

It is an Excel file, no macros, no extensions. Share it with any founder about to switch co-packers.

Make It Yours: Hand It to Your AI Agent

Our worked example runs on a generic product line and country agnostic. Yours is specific, and the gate questions, the certifications, and the validation items should match what your product actually needs. Good news: you do not have to rewrite any of it by hand.

Open the file, then open ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever AI assistant you already use, and paste the prompt below. It will interview you about your product for about two minutes, and honestly, it probably knows half the answers already, then hand back a version of the screen rebuilt around you: tailored gate questions, the right certifications, your real kill criteria, and a validation list that fits your category.

You are helping me adapt a co-packer vetting system to my specific product. The system has three stages: (1) a Pre-Screen of six gate questions, each with a "kill criteria" that disqualifies a candidate; (2) a 26-point Validation Checklist across facility & certifications, production, ingredients, quality control, and logistics, where each item is tagged Must-Have or Important; and (3) a Vendor Tracker where each candidate gets a status and the reason it earned that status.

Before you change anything, interview me. Ask me these questions one at a time and wait for my answer before the next:

  1. What product are you making, and what format does it ship in (pouch, jar, bar, bottle, box)?
  2. What certifications do you require from a co-packer (for example GFSI, organic, kosher, halal, allergen control), and which are non-negotiable versus nice-to-have?
  3. What is your annual volume forecast per SKU, and how many SKUs?
  4. What market(s) do you sell into, and what labeling or regulatory rules apply there?
  5. What is your rough target all-in cost per unit, if you have one?
  6. Any deal-breakers specific to your product (special equipment, cold chain, short shelf life, fragile packaging)?

Once you have my answers, give me back three things: (a) my six Pre-Screen gate questions rewritten for my product, each with a specific kill criteria; (b) a Must-Have versus Important tag on each of the 26 validation items based on what actually matters for my product, and flag any item I should add or drop; and (c) a short list of the disqualifiers I am most likely to hit, in the order I should screen for them.

The screen you run before the first call is the one that saves you the next nineteen. Filter first. Then dial.

Ops Intel

This week in operations and supply chain:

Supplier Deliveries Index. Manufacturing PMI hit 54% in May, with supplier delivery times at their slowest pace since May 2022. Lead times are stretching across the board, making early co-packer screening increasingly valuable as onboarding cycles lengthen.

Allergen Recall Pattern. Recent recalls involved undeclared allergens including egg in pancake mix, shrimp in dumplings, and tree nuts in muffins. Strong allergen control and rapid lot traceability emerge as critical Must-Have capabilities.

Tariff-Driven Sourcing Shifts. Tariff pressure is prompting brands to reconsider packaging and input sourcing, with movement toward US-made alternatives. A supplier's location and sourcing flexibility have become important screening factors.