Food and beverage
Selling direct what you produce
With no middlemen nobody asks you for paperwork — until someone asks who will not accept «I make it myself».
You produce and sell it yourself: at the farm, at a market, in your own shop or online. **You have skipped the entire chain**, and with it everyone who, on the normal route, would have asked you for paperwork one at a time. That has an obvious upside —margin and direct contact— and an effect that takes a while to surface: nobody has been teaching you what you need to hold.
When the first one who does ask turns up
| Who | What they want | If you do not have it |
|---|---|---|
| A private customer | To know what they are buying | It is settled by talking |
| A restaurant | To evidence who they buy from | The customer falls through |
| A shop or a group | A complete file | No account is opened |
| **An inspection** | **Whatever applies** | **It is not settled by talking** |
Important
**The jump is not from selling little to selling a lot: it is from selling to people to selling to companies.** The day a restaurant, a shop or a platform buys from you, you enter somebody else's chain — and that chain has requirements that do not scale down to your size. That day always arrives earlier than expected, usually as a good opportunity that needs answering within a week.
What is worth having before you need it
- 1
Knowing what you sell, in what quantity and to whom
Even at the most basic level: it is the first thing you will be asked.
- 2
Keeping what you already generate
Records, invoices, analyses. There is almost always more than it seems.
- 3
Holding it in one place and not five
The day it has to be sent, it gets sent; it does not get hunted for.
- 4
And knowing what expires
What renews once a year is forgotten once a year.
Watch out
What gets lost through having no paperwork is rarely a penalty: **it is customers who never become customers**. A restaurant wants to buy from you, asks for something, you do not have it to hand, you say you will send it next week — and that week they buy from someone else. There is no dispute, no complaint and no way for you to learn it happened. It is the quietest loss in this position and the only one avoided by two afternoons of work.
Worth knowing
What a direct sale requires exactly —registrations, authorisations, labelling, premises conditions— **depends on the product, the volume, the channel and the country, and is settled by your competent authority or your adviser**. Here we cover what is common to all of it: how to keep what you already have to hand and current, so you can answer the day someone asks.
›If I sell very little, do I need anything?
It depends on the product and channel, and your authority settles that. Keeping what you already generate in order does not depend on volume.
›What will a restaurant ask me for?
Usually less than you fear, but they want it that week.
›Is it worth doing before anyone asks?
That is exactly the moment when it costs little and is worth something.
A real case
The situation
A restaurant asks for documentation and it is not to hand.
What you do
- Gathers what is already generated in one place
What you get
You answer that week instead of the next.
The situation
Records are split across notebooks, email and a phone.
What you do
- Keeps everything in a single file
What you get
What exists is visible without searching three places.
The situation
An annual document expires and nobody remembers until it is needed.
What you do
- Warns before it falls due
What you get
Renewal happens with time to spare.
The situation
Every new customer asks for the same thing and it starts from scratch.
What you do
- Reuses the same file for each request
What you get
The second customer costs far less than the first.
The situation
There is no record of who was sold what.
What you do
- Records deliveries with date and recipient
What you get
There is an answer if anyone asks later.
The situation
Starting to sell to businesses looks like a different world.
What you do
- Shows what is missing for the file to be complete
What you get
The step is taken from a list rather than a hunch.
This article answers
- selling direct to consumers documentation
- farm gate sales what do i need
- market stall or own shop paperwork
- a customer asks for certificates and i have none