If you're hoping get a promotion or continue to move forward in the career that you're in, it's helpful to have a good idea of what's "industry standard" in your position and work field.  

It's hard to expect that someday you'll make $100,000 each year when the industry standard is $30,000.  That said, it's also good to get a better understanding of what your peers might be getting paid to make sure you're being paid competitively.

Having an understanding of the average information about your job (and others like it) will also help you make decisions about what you'd like to do more of in the future.

That's why I've compiled lots of salary and job availability information about purchasing and manufacturing jobs to help you get a bit of perspective on your current job-- and make plans for the future.

If you need to meet a particular price point on your bulk oil ingredients that may seem unreachably low, you do have a few options.  You can reach your price goals, but you'll have to make some choices, and prioritize what's most important to you.

This discussion is especially pertinant for manufacturers who are trying to reach a particular target customer (which means you'll need to keep your own product within a particular price range) or if you're a co-packer that is packing for a brand that has specific price restrictions.

I worked with a customer in this situation a year ago.  They came to me wanting a "really low price for Extra Virgin Olive Oil".  It had to be Extra Virgin, and it had to be under $1.00 per pound.  Unfortunately, I explained to them, that's just not going to happen.  

So where do you go from there?  Here's theadvice I gave them, on the best ways to drastically reduce bulk oil costs, meet the customers' price goals and move forward with a strategic plan.  

If you're on the search for a new bulk oil supplier, there's some basic questions that you'll need to ask.  These inquiries will be your basic introduction, but will actually build your foundation for years of a good working relationship.  

The answers to these questions will be a vital part of choosing who you want to work with, how you're going to partner together and if they're going to be able to take care of you in times of need.

In fact, these questions are so important that if you're already buying bulk oil from a supplier and you forgot to to ask a few of these questions, you'll probably want to go back and ask anyways.

This will help you be fully prepared to partner together-- the more you know now, the better.  

Here's everything you should be asking your suppliers (whether you've worked with them for years or not).

Want to lock in a contracted rate for for your bulk oil ingredients?  As a purchaser buying raw ingredients for a manufacturing company, this can be a very smart thing to do.  

Signing a price contract can give your company stability on your cost of ingredients, and allow you to stategically plan your budget.  In addition, it can provide you with a bit of cushion if the commodity market unexpectedly goes south.

But, if you lock in your rates at the wrong time, you'll be required to pay more than the market price for oils.  It takes a firm understanding of the market and good help from your suppliers to lock in pricing at the right time.

So in the debate of whether to sign a supply contract or not, the definitive answer is yes, go for it-- but only at the right time.  When is it the right time?

You'll need to ask the right questions and the answer will emerge naturally after that.

Everyone has days where they didn't feel like they got enough done.  I completely understand that feeling.

You answer your emails, have a quick meeting, answer some calls, place a few orders, and suddenly-- it's the end of the day.  How did that happen?  And you've still got a long list left to complete!

Well, I've come up with my own personal favorite list of all the productivity helpers that I actually use on a daily basis.  Here are 7 of the best tools, tips and apps to keep you on track and checking things off your to-do list.

As a follow up from yesterday's blog, Why It's Ideal To List Multiple Potential Bulk Oil Ingredients, today we'll be discussing how to go about the process of qualifying multiple ingredient for your label.

In review, some brands often list multiple ingredients with an "and/or" stipulation. For example, our chips may be made with Canola Oil, Sunflower Oil, and/or Safflower Oil.  The consumer doesn't get to know exactly what they're eating in that particular bag, but they know it will have been made with at least one of those 3 ingredients.  

This decision to list more than one commodity bulk oil ingredient is a strategic business choice.  It helps protect the company in times of commodity market crisis, where one ingredient may be high priced, or even worse, completely unavailable.

Want to do this for your product?  We'll walk you through the steps.

Have you ever looked on the back of some products to find ingredient labels that list multiple potential ingredients?

Canola Oil, Sunflower Oil and/or Safflower Oil?  Soybean Oil and/or Corn Oil?  This is especially common when the ingredients are used for cooking or preparation-- you'll find this in chips and popcorn a lot because of that.

What this ingredient label means is that the bulk oil ingredients that may be used in the product could be Canola Oil... but it also might be Sunflower Oil or Safflower Oil.  Or maybe both, or all three.  Whatever the company happens to decide for to use that production run is a-okay, because they've already listed the possible choices on their ingredient list.

This trend is especially common with oil ingredients, since they are often commodities and, in some products, are easily interchangable.  

Ever wonder why companies list more than one possibile ingredient?  There's a good (and very self-preserving) reason behind it.  

The era of Non-GMO is upon us.

No matter how you feel about the non-GMO movement, it's a fact that it's in full swing in the food industry, and it's still picking up speed.  

This movement, still in its adolescence, will come in stages.  It's childhood was the blossoming of demand for non-GMO foods and the establishment of small companies and niche brands that catered to this new trend.  Next comes the transition of large mainstream companies to non-GMO, as they hop on the bandwagon.  In fact, we're just moving into phase two of this movement now.  

This evolution of large companies "hopping on board" has an affect on the entire supply and demand chain for non-GMO ingredients.  If you also buy non-GMO, it will affect how your business gets ingredients, if they're available and what the prices are.  

You'll want to know this, and you'll want to begin preparing now.

If you're working on a new product which uses olive oil as an ingredient, the first step is to decide what is the best grade to use in your product. 

There are a lot of factors that tie into this final olive oil grade decision-- many little interwebbed strings that connect this decision with the outer-reaches of your business planning.  Choosing a grade is not only an R&D decision; it ties into purchasing, marketing and new business development.  

To make a decision on the grade you'll use, you'll need to ask yourself questions like:

• How much can I pay for this ingredient?  
• Does a particular grade of oil make or break the taste profile for my product?  
• Does our target market prefer that we use a particular grade, like Extra Virgin?  
• Can we afford to factor their opinions in?  Can we afford not to?

Before you get overwhelmed, I'm going to streamline the decision process for you.  Just follow these 3 steps and you'll be well on your way to making a smart decision for your business.

Getting your bulk oil in totes for the first time can be a bit daunting, if you've never done it before.  We get lots of questions from manufacturers who are switching from smaller containers to totes about their functionality-- specifically:

"Once the tote arrives, how do we get actually get the oil out of the tote?"

Not to worry!  It's not that hard to get a new system set up.  But it certainly does help to have a step by step visual to see what you'll need to purchase in preparation.

We've found that the best way to get the bulk olive oil out of the tote-- specifically for small manufacturers or if you are new to totes-- is to use a valve that attaches to a hose.  Now, we've talked about how to attach a valve to the tote in the past, but we haven't talked much about what to connect to this valve after that.  So I'm going to do just that today!

If you buy organic olive oil in bulk for your company, here's all the basics that you're going to want to know.  We'll review the best questions we've gotten over the years about Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and give you some straight-forward and helpful answers.

Answers to questions like:

1. How is organic olive oil made?
2. How is organic extra virgin olive oil diffferent than regular extra virgin?
3. Is "certified organic" different than just organic?
4. Is organic olive oil always "extra virgin" olive oil too?
5. What is the price of organic olive oil, especially compared to regular extra virgin olive oil?
6. What makes the price of organic olive oil change?
7. What kind of quality documentation should I expect?
8. Is Organic Olive Oil also certified Kosher?
9. What kind of packaging does organic olive oil come in?

If you're on the search for olive oil in bulk, you may be coming up against the large confusing mass of directions for where to buy... Otherwise... known as Google.  

The best way to answer the question of where to buy bulk olive oil is to define what industry your business is in and find a supplier that matches with that.  

If we were sitting at a coffee shop, friend to friend, I would first ask you what you did and then I'd be able to point you to the right type of supply company.

So, I will try to do just that.  I have my coffee-- pull up a chair.

Choosing an olive oil supplier is a complex process. At the heart of this debate, before you begin doing comparisons, you’ll need to decide if you prefer to work with a US-based supplier or an international supplier. If you choose the latter, you will be responsible to import the oil yourself.

As you start the vendor comparison process for bulk olive oil, here’s a few advantages you might enjoy by working with a domestic supplier here in the US:

If you’re in purchasing or procurement, getting the documents for the ingredients that you buy is a key part of your job. Some companies require more documentation than others because of their industry or their own product certifications. But no matter who you work for, you’re going to be requesting documents at some point or another.

If you’re sourcing bulk oils, here’s the top 6 documents that your supplier should be able to provide. These are also the most common documents that we at Centra Foods gets requests for on a daily basis.

If you have a fast-growing manufacturing business and you're still using a manual production line, this discussion is for you.  

We work with a number of large (and still growing!) customers and though they use a lot of oil in bulk, but they still purchase in 35 Lb. Containers.   Why? Because that's how their production line has been set up.  They know there's a better, cheaper way, but making the switch is a process-- and it can be a bit overwhelming.

They're working on making the switch, and you should too.  Here's why:

• The oil is cheaper.  Buying in bulk sizes like drums or totes can cut $0.02-$0.05 /lb off the oil instantly.
• With a system in place (pumps, hoses, etc.) the oil is so much easier to get out of the packaging and into your line
• You will have much less waste-- think of all those 35 Lbers no longer in your trash or recycling!