Private label drinks: how it works and what it costs

Private label means the product already exists and the brand is yours. That saves years of development, but there are a few things to know up front.

What you are buying

You buy an existing drink, bottled and labelled under your name. The recipe, the production, the excise duty and the legally required labelling are handled. You supply the design and decide the quantity.

How the price is built up

The price per bottle has four parts: the drink itself, the packaging, the label printing and the quantity. The last one matters most. Going from 50 to 500 bottles almost always halves the print cost per unit, because setting up the press costs the same at any quantity.

What you need to supply

• A logo in vector format (ai, eps or pdf), not a screenshot.
• The texts for the label, including your company name as the responsible seller.
• A choice of flavour and format.
• The quantity you want and the date it has to be there.

Lead time

From a final design, 6 to 8 weeks is normal. The design itself is almost always the bottleneck, not the production. Start early and you never need to rush.

When private label is not the right call

If you want a flavour that does not exist, a claim on the label that requires research, or tens of thousands of units a month on your own recipe, you are looking at genuine product development instead. Say so in the first conversation; we would rather point you elsewhere than start you down the wrong path.

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