🎯 The business: an American sports-nutrition snack brand (protein bars, cookies, chips) made by a U.S. co-packer and sold to German distributors and online fitness retailers. Germany is Europe’s biggest fitness market and imports U.S. brands eagerly, as long as the labels and the additives pass EU rules.
German sports-nutrition distributors, online retailers, gym chains and drugstore chains such as dm and Rossmann for the mass market. A bar that retails at €2.50 to €3.50 is sold to the distributor at about €1.00 to €1.30. The German market also opens Austria and Switzerland through the same distributors.
| LLC and licenses | $200 |
| Co-packer first run (10,000 bars) with EU-compliant recipe | $8,000 to $12,000 |
| EU label compliance review, nutrition analysis, German labels | $1,500 |
| EU responsible person or importer arrangement | varies |
| Samples, shipping, FIBO (Cologne) visit | $3,000 to $5,000 |
| All-in | ≈ $13,000 to $20,000 |
Have an EU food-law consultant review your recipe before production: sweeteners, colors, vitamin levels and health claims differ from U.S. rules, and “high protein” has a legal definition in the EU. Find a co-packer who has exported to Europe. Visit FIBO in Cologne, the world’s largest fitness trade show, or book a Gold Key in Germany. Prepare a German-language price list and sell sheet.
A bar that costs $0.70 to make and label sells at about $1.15 to the distributor, leaving $0.45 before freight and marketing. A 50,000-bar order is about $22,000 of margin. Sea freight for shelf-stable bars is cheap per unit. The brand that gets a drugstore listing ships by the container.
EU food information regulation for labels (German language, allergens, nutrition declaration format), the EU additives and novel food rules, nutrition and health claims regulation, an importer or EU establishment responsible for compliance, and FDA facility registration. Germany also requires registration with its packaging register (LUCID) for the packaging you put on the German market, usually via the importer.
A sweetener permitted in the U.S. and not in the EU. A health claim on the wrapper that German authorities reject. A distributor who demands marketing contributions before the first reorder. The brands that last pay for the compliance review before the first run, sell through one distributor, and build the online channel in parallel.