Key takeaways
- A CPG founder gives your site 10 seconds and eight checks. Most plant sites fail all eight above the fold.
- Publish an MOQ range. Silence reads as 'we start at a truckload' — and she's on to the next tab.
- Real floor photos beat stock imagery. Founders are checking whether your plant actually exists.
A CPG founder gives your co-packer website about 10 seconds. Not because she's lazy — because she has 11 other tabs open and a launch date bearing down on her. In those 10 seconds she's checking for eight specific things, and most plant sites show her none of them.
Why your co-packer website gets 10 seconds, not 10 minutes
Start with how she found you. She built a shortlist from a directory, a broker referral, a trade show supplier list, a few Google searches — we mapped that whole path in where CPG brands look when they need a co-packer. Your site is one of 8-12 tabs she opened in a single sitting on a Tuesday night.
She's not reading. She's disqualifying. Every tab that doesn't answer her questions gets closed, and you never find out it happened. There's no report for "almost emailed you."
Here's the good news. The bar is on the floor. The average co-packer website is a stock photo of wheat, a paragraph about quality and integrity since 1987, and a contact form that routes to nobody. Answer eight questions plainly and you beat most of the plants on her list without spending a dollar on a redesign.
Checks 1-4: Can you physically make my product?
1. Lines and formats
Do you fill what she sells? Pouches, glass, cans, cartons. Hot fill, retort, aseptic, cold fill. If she makes a shelf-stable hot sauce in 5-oz glass and your site never says the word "bottle," she's gone in four seconds. Write it like a spec sheet: "Hot fill glass and PET, 2 oz to 64 oz, up to 120 bottles per minute." One sentence like that does more work than your entire About page.
2. MOQs
This is the number founders hunt for hardest, and the one plants hide most. You don't need to commit to an exact figure — publish an honest range. "Minimum runs typically 5,000-15,000 units depending on format." A $2M brand doing 30,000 units a quarter reads that and knows she's in your zone. Silence reads as "we start at a truckload," and she moves on. If your minimums are high, say so — you'll stop wasting your own time on calls with brands doing farmers market volume.
3. Certifications
SQF, BRC, organic, kosher, gluten-free. List them, and list the audit year. Founders selling into Whole Foods, Costco, or Target already know which letters their buyer requires; plenty of first-timers don't, which is why we wrote a plain-English breakdown of SQF vs. BRC for co-packers. Either way, the check is binary: the cert is on your site or it isn't. Her retail buyer's first supplier question will be about your audit — she knows that, so she's looking for it now.
4. Location
City and state, on the homepage — not buried in the footer of a contact page. Freight is a line item she's already modeling: a full truckload cross-country runs roughly $2,500-$4,500, and less-than-truckload on 8 pallets can eat the margin on a small run. A founder in Austin looking at a plant in Vermont needs to know that before she emails, not after three calls.
Checks 5-8: Is this plant real, and will anyone answer?
5. Photos of your actual floor
Not stock photos. Yours. A founder can spot a licensed image of a European bottling line in half a second, and it reads one way: this plant is hiding something. Take 10 phone photos of your actual lines, your tanks, your warehouse — clean day, decent light. A 38-person sauce plant in Ohio with honest floor photos looks more trustworthy than a 200-person operation wallpapered in stock imagery.
6. Categories you already run
She wants to know you've made something like her product before. You don't need to name clients — most of your agreements won't let you anyway. Categories are enough: "We run sauces, marinades, dressings, and drink concentrates." That single line answers "have you handled my acid level, my viscosity, my allergens" well enough to earn the email.
7. A named human
A contact form that dumps into an unwatched inbox is where deals go to die. Put a name, a title, and a direct email on the site. "New product inquiries: Dana, VP Sales, dana@yourplant.com." A founder choosing between two plants of equal capability picks the one where a person answered — every time.
8. Signs of life
A copyright line from 2021. A news page whose last post is a 2019 trade show recap. Nothing anywhere about whether you have capacity this year. Stale sites make founders wonder if the plant is limping. One dated line — "Booking co-pack runs for Q1" — signals more than any mission statement ever written.
What plant sites lead with vs. what she's scanning for
Put the average co-packer homepage next to the founder's checklist and the mismatch is stark.
| What the site leads with | What she's scanning for |
|---|---|
| "Quality is our passion" hero copy | Formats and fill types, in plain words |
| Stock photo of wheat at sunset | Photos of your actual lines |
| "Contact us to learn more" | An MOQ range she can self-qualify against |
| An undated wall of certification logos | Cert names plus current audit year |
| A generic contact form | A named person with a direct email |
Nothing in the right-hand column requires a redesign. It's copy and photos. Whoever manages your site now can ship every change in a weekend on whatever platform it already runs.
The one-afternoon fix
You don't need a $15,000 rebuild. You need the eight answers, above the fold, in this order of effort:
- Write your formats, sizes, and line speeds as a spec list. 30 minutes.
- Publish an MOQ range. One sentence. Argue about it internally for 20 minutes if you must, then publish it anyway.
- List certs with audit years. 10 minutes.
- Put your city and state in the header. 5 minutes.
- Shoot 10 real floor photos on a clean day. One hour, including the arguing.
- Add the categories you run, a named contact, and one dated line about current capacity. 30 minutes.
Do that and your site stops leaking the demand you already earned. But keep it in perspective: a website is a filter, not a pipeline. It converts founders who were already looking — it doesn't create them. The plants that keep their schedules full run outbound to brands that fit their lines, which is exactly the engine Feed The Line builds for co-packers. And once the emails start landing, the next skill matters more than any homepage: how you respond to a co-packing RFQ decides whether the tab she kept open turns into a run on your schedule.
Frequently asked questions
Q-01What should a co-packer website include?
At minimum: the formats and fill types you run, an honest MOQ range, your certifications with audit years, your city and state, and photos of your actual production floor. Add the product categories you already run and a named contact with a direct email. Those answers let a brand self-qualify before emailing you.
Q-02Should a co-packer list MOQs on their website?
Yes — as a range, not an exact commitment. A line like "minimum runs typically 5,000-15,000 units depending on format" lets right-sized brands qualify themselves in and wrong-sized ones out. Hiding MOQs doesn't create inquiries; it moves founders to the next tab.
Q-03Why do CPG brands reject co-packers based on their website?
Because the site is the only evidence a brand has before first contact. Missing formats, no MOQ signal, undated certifications, and stock photography all read as risk, so founders close the tab and email a competitor instead. Most rejections happen in the first 10 seconds, and the plant never hears about them.
Written by
Murtaza Udaypurwala
Founder, Feed The Line · Director, DESENO Media Agency
Murtaza runs Feed The Line, the outbound revenue engine that fills co-packer lines with qualified CPG brands. He writes about capacity economics, MOQ math, and pipeline for food & beverage plant owners.
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