What to Put in Writing With Your Tea Co-Packer

A private label tea order can run smoothly for months on nothing more than email threads and a purchase order, right up until a reorder price shifts, a recipe question comes up, or a batch doesn't match what was approved. At that point, whatever was actually agreed matters far more than what either side remembers agreeing to. None of this requires a dense legal contract from day one, but a handful of points are worth capturing in writing before production starts, and a lawyer should look over anything beyond a small trial order.

For a buyer building a private label range across tea and dried fruit, the same gap shows up in slightly different places: a fruit tea blend has a recipe to protect just as a herbal one does, and a dried fruit packing run has its own spec sheet and sample stage even though the product is not a tea bag at all. The categories differ, but the documentation habit that protects a buyer is the same one across all of them.

Anchor the Order to a Spec Sheet, Not a Description

A purchase order that says chamomile tea bags, 20,000 units leaves too much room for two different products. The written agreement should point to a specific spec sheet: blend or single-herb identity, target grammage such as an example range of 1.5 to 3 grams, bag format such as string-and-tag with an individual envelope, and the packaging tier down to carton labeling. For dried fruit, the equivalent spec covers the fruit source, the form the buyer expects and the retail or wholesale packaging it ships in. Once that spec exists, both the quote and the production run can be checked against the same document instead of a paraphrase of it, and any change to the spec on a later order should be a written update rather than a verbal adjustment.

Settle Who Owns the Recipe

Recipe ownership is easy to skip past when a first order is small, and expensive to sort out later once a blend is selling well. If you bring your own formulation, the agreement should state plainly that it is your property and that the packer's role is limited to sourcing and production under your instruction. If the recipe was developed jointly, working through samples together, put in writing whether that formulation belongs to you exclusively or whether the packer retains the right to offer something similar elsewhere.

Write Down Pricing Logic, Not Just a Number

A quoted unit price answers the first order; it does not answer the second one. The agreement should note what the price is based on for a stated period or quantity, and what specifically can move it on a reorder: a change in tea or herb cost, a change in printed packaging, or a different order volume than the one quoted. It should also be clear whether that quote carries a validity window, since a price given in one season is not necessarily still current the next. The same logic applies to reorder lead time: if a repeat order is expected to move faster than the first because artwork and settings already exist, put that expectation in writing rather than assuming it, since a packer running at capacity may not treat a repeat order as automatically faster.

Reference the Approved Sample by Name

Once a sample round is signed off, that approval is doing real work: it is the physical reference a full production run gets measured against. The agreement should identify that sample specifically, by date, batch reference or a written description of what was approved, rather than leaving approval implicit in an email that says looks good. If a second sample round happens later, note which round is the one actually governing production.

Name the Standards You Can Actually Point To

Quality language in an agreement is only useful if it names something specific. State the certifications the supplier genuinely holds, such as ISO 9001 or ISO 22000, and separate those clearly from practices that are applied without being a standalone certificate, such as HACCP principles operating inside a broader food safety system. Where a regulatory requirement applies to your target market, such as ingredient declaration or labeling language, note that it needs confirming with the competent authority or a regulatory adviser rather than writing in a specific rule from memory.

Let a Lawyer Turn Points Into Language

Everything above describes what is worth capturing, not how to phrase it so it holds up if something goes wrong. A lawyer experienced in supply or manufacturing agreements can turn a spec reference, a recipe clause and a reorder pricing term into language that actually protects both sides, and can flag jurisdiction-specific issues that a general checklist like this one will not catch. Treat this article as a list of what to raise with one, not a substitute for that review.

TeraVella runs contract tea bag production, dried fruit packing and private label packaging out of Antalya, and works from a written spec and an approved sample on every order regardless of size.