What are Amazon's food selling requirements in 2022

Posted by Damian Roberti on May 3, 2022

What are Amazon's food selling requirements in 2022

What are Amazon's food selling requirements in 2022? If you're looking to sell on Amazon and you have a great food product, but you're not really sure where to get started or what is expected of you as a seller, in this video, I'm going to dive into the specifics as to how you can sell your food products online and answer the other question of, can you sell perishable foods on Amazon? We're going to dive into those two questions right now.

All right. So, welcome back to marketing food online. It is Damian Roberti, the CEO, marketing food online. So in this video, as I mentioned in the introduction, if you are looking to sell your food products on Amazon, you need to understand a few things before you get onto the platform. So I'm actually going to do a video series starting with this particular video. And I'm going to explain to you, in breakdown, what Amazon actually expects of its food and grocery category sellers, and specifically, what you need to do to be successful. So before we do definitely check out our brand new membership program, there is a little video right there. You can check us out down below this video. There's a little button that says "join," which is our brand new membership program. There are three tiers, and you can apply to any of them.

What are Amazon's food selling requirements in 2022

And each one of those tiers has different perks and different benefits attached to them. And of course, the top tier, you have an opportunity, a top tier. Actually, you have an opportunity to actually work directly with us and get some advice. One on one with our staff, as well as myself, and check out the memberships. It's got a lot of great features, and it helps us continue to develop and bring these videos to you. So let's dive right into it. So Amazon's food selling requirements are not very difficult. If you understand the basics of how they work, I'm going to dive into the three important aspects to get started with and what they expect. So the first one, when you start to dive into the grocery category, you want to make sure that you meet these standards. The seller's requirements performance requirements are pretty, pretty simple to do, but you do need to work at it.

What are Amazon's food selling requirements in 2022

You need to make sure that every transaction you do is a hundred percent good to go. And every customer enjoys what they get, as well as the customer service you offer them for your product. So your order deficiency rate has to be at 1% or less. So in order for you to maintain your seller account, specifically for groceries and food, make sure you work as hard as you can to maintain the deficiency rate of 1% or less, the pre-fulfillment cancellation rate. Now, what is the pre-fulfillment cancellation rate, Dame? I've never heard of that. I'm new to Amazon. So pre fulfillment is if you have an order that's pending and you cancel it because, let's say, a customer doesn't send you an order cancellation, but they send you an email saying, "Hey, you know what, Damien, I'm just going to pass on those particular products that the bakers, I don't really need them for my party."

What are Amazon's food selling requirements in 2022

Could you please cancel the order? Make sure that you request for your customer to send you an order of cancellation. It's actually a request that they have to fulfill on their end. That way, it won't affect your actual rate, your order, and your pre-fulfillment cancellation rate won't be affected by that cancellation. If you cancel an order without getting one of those, then it actually works against you. Instead of the buyer sending you an order cancellation where it doesn't go against you, you want to make sure that's also kept at around 2.5% of your orders. So anything less than that is fine, but don't exceed 2.5% when it comes to pre fulfillment cancellation rate, because then that's something that would be negative on your account. As an Amazon seller, Number three, late shipment is 4% or less. So what does that mean?

So let's say out of every a hundred orders, you cannot have a late shipment of over four of those orders or more. What does that mean? Well, let's just say that you had to ship it on Monday, January 1st, and you shipped it. You had a late shipment rate because you didn't ship four of those orders past the 1st of January. That would actually count against you because that is considered a late fulfillment shipment rate and is based on a percentage. So again, as an example, if you had a hundred orders, you definitely don't want to have more than four of those orders be late, because that would be something that potentially could ding you down and not allow you to sell in the grocery category. Now let's dive into a little more in depth about the product requirements specifically. I'm going to go through a list of things that Amazon actually requires for the product.

What are Amazon's food selling requirements in 2022

Now pay close attention to what I'm about to tell you, because these are things that they will definitely not cut quarters on, and you can't get around this part, this aspect of your actual product requirements. So you want to make sure you follow this to a T. Let's dive into that. All right. So, number one, product requirements. So food must be properly prepared, sealed, labeled, and packaged. So what does that mean? Food must be properly prepared. Okay, So when you do make your food product, you want to make sure that you're following the FDA guidelines for nutritional analysis and ingredient listing. You've got the net weight net mail of the product on the front of the package as well, or anywhere on the package, predominantly on the front, the net weight of the package. And you want to make sure you've got the name of the product. And of course, the address of your business. Two, you must be licensed or have approval from the relevant government agencies for the product you plan to sell.

What are Amazon's food selling requirements in 2022

What does that mean? Okay, So, if you have a food product, the relevant government agencies would be the department of agriculture or the United States Department of Agriculture.If they are inspecting your food manufacturing facility, the health department, or FDA registration and FDA guidelines, Now the FDA itself doesn't necessarily inspect per se. The actual facilities you're going to work with That will be either enforcement from the US Department of Agriculture or the local health department, preferably the department of agriculture.If you're producing or manufacturing a food product that would normally fall under the department of agriculture, your local office will be the ones where they'll come in and do an inspection on that. Thirdly, you must ensure your products and business operations comply with federal and state law. So this includes anything that, as I mentioned on Amazon, has a specific set of rules.

This would go outside of what Amazon actually lists as what they expect. You need to make sure, first and foremost, if you have state laws governing the type and the way that you manufacture your food product and make it and federal laws, which would, of course, fall under what is expected from the FDA, as far as the processing, handling, and labeling of your food product. all right? As a result, all gourmet food products are new.Now, I know this may sound silly, but number four is really important because a lot of times people may buy products online. If you actually are reselling products on Amazon, you have to make sure that there are a whole bunch of issues with the brand, which I'll get into in another video, but selling and reselling other brands. You want to make sure that you have the authorization to do that.

What are Amazon's food selling requirements in 2022

If you're a wholesaler and you're buying them a lot, Amazon will actually request that you simulate or get approval to resell branded products. Now, with that being said, you want to make sure that all the food items, even if you're making the food product, are listed as new number one, number five, and food is viewed as date-sensitive. So basically, this means that every unit must have an expiration date permanently marked on every unit unless the product is exempt. Okay? So every food product does have a best buy date, not necessarily an expiration date. Food products have best buy dates. The only thing that technically has an expiration date is baby formula and baby foods. The FDA says it on their website. When it comes to food products, you need to know the best buy date. And they look at that as a date-sensitive item.

So make sure that if you're making your own product, that it's got that best by date. Next up, keep the fulfillment center shelf life details up to date of the grocery product. This is critical right now.So Amazon's fulfillment centers If you're using FBA and you're actually tapping into their warehousing, you want to make sure that all the food products you have in their warehouse are actually up-to-date and within a certain period for the consumer to consume them. So, for instance, in January, if you put a product in there in the warehouse and you had only about a three-month shelf life, you need to make sure that you have a long enough window of time for expiry, that that is the best buy date that is able to be consumed by the consumer. So make sure that you have all of those shelf life dates up to date.

What are Amazon's food selling requirements in 2022

Next, labels must be in English on all products covered by federal, state, and local laws. So basically, the federal labor policies on the FDA website will tell you specifically how it needs to be labeled and then actually include pet food as well. Next up, enclose and seal the food and packaging suit for shipping. Now, keep this in mind that it must be food that is free of contaminants. It must be kept from contamination, spoiling, melting, or damage. So whatever, if you have a product, let's say chocolate pretzels, and they're very easy to break, make sure that they're in a rigid container or something that won't break them, because the customer doesn't want to buy broken things. And then when it's in the warehouse unit at Amazon, it's going to be touched and moved around and grabbed and boxed and everything. So make sure you have your food product, whatever it is, in some kind of packaging so that it is at its best when it arrives to the customer.

Exactly the way they expect it. Okay. Next up, when you sell products in multi-packs, this is gonna be multi-pack, let's say there was a bag of chips and you had five variations and five flavors of chips, but it's actually in a multi-pack. You want to make sure that the expiration date on the multi-pack packaging must match the earliest expiration date for the product inside. Okay. So on the outside, for instance, if you have a different vari of exploration or best buy dates on those food products, make sure that they're the one that's expiring the most earliest is the one that's gonna have the expiration date on the packaging, because if you open a box and you've got several different types of flavors of chips, and two of the bags are actually gonna expire in a couple weeks, the other ones have a few months that's gonna pose a problem.

Okay. Next up the lastly though, you must list grocery and gourmet food products using the manufacturer's up CCO. So if you're actually, again selling somebody's product, that's already manufactured. Let's say planters, peanuts, and you wanna resell planters peanuts, make sure that you're using specifically the UPC code to actually classify the product on Amazon's catalog. Okay. So that is a really quick rundown of, we're gonna have a couple other videos. I wanna explain more about refrigerated and frozen foods, and also how to validate what's known as the chill chain and a few other items. If you're selling bulk food items, we're gonna get into that as well. In this video, I wanted to cover the really beginning basics seller requirements and the product requirements. So if you look at a sell food on Amazon, definitely let us know of, you've got questions down below this video and keep an eye open for our next couple videos where we're gonna get into more in depth about specifically chilled and cold and refrigerated foods. If you want to sell frozen foods or even fruit and fresh vegetables that are perishable as well, we're gonna dive into that as well. So I'll see you guys on our next video.

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