How UPC Codes Work
Guest post is provided by Food Trade Consultants, a consultation service offering seminars and packing of small orders to entrepreneurs in the food industry. Visit www.foodtradeconsultants.com for more information.
If you plan to start your own food business, especially if you plan to sell your product in grocery or wholesale stores, food trade consultants will recommend that you get a UPC code. In fact, they even feel it is a necessary requirement for a successful business in the food industry. UPC codes allow your wholesale customers to quickly scan your products to track them for their own records, as well as send you payments.
If you look around your own kitchen you will notice that there are UPC codes everywhere. Anything that is packaged has a UPC code, and even produce usually has a sticker. UPC stands for “Universal Product Code” and was created by a company called the Uniform Code Council (UCC) manufacturers can only use the UPC process if they apply for permission to use it from the UCC. This successful method of coding has revolutionized retailers and manufacturers alike, making selling and tracking incredibly efficient. Processing sales would take significantly longer and require more resources than simply scanning a UPC.
Food consultants advise you to register for two to three different UPCs, one for an individual sale of a product, one for multiple quantities of your product sold together, and one for palate sales of your product. It would be a good goal to get some accounts that want to buy a palate’s worth of product from you. Those are huge accounts indicative of your success. Without a UPC, a customer of yours may feel that your product will be too hard to track, or even violate their policies for selling it, causing them to pass you by. Avoid this by getting a UPC code for your product.