Food Manufacturers Editing and Proofreading Services

A retailer rejects a delivery because the product is outside specification on a colour value nobody at the factory has ever measured. The specification was signed eighteen months ago, agreed by a technologist who has since left, and contains parameters copied from a template. It is now the only definition of what the customer bought, and it is the document a claim will be decided against.

We edit what food manufacturers produce — product specifications and customer technical documents, process and recipe documentation, quality and release procedures, factory work instructions, complaint and non-conformance responses, supplier specifications and approval documents, new product launch documentation, and technical correspondence with retail customers. Our editors work on the documents that define what was agreed.

The product specification agreed with a customer is the contract behind the product, and its failure is a set of parameters nobody in the factory could measure or hit. A specification is not a description; it is a promise made in numbers. We work through these so every parameter has a method, a tolerance and a frequency, since a target without a method is two different numbers and a target without a tolerance is a target that fails half the time; so any parameter the factory does not routinely measure is either removed or resourced before signature, because a specification containing an unmeasured line is a rejection waiting to happen; so the tolerances are set against what the process actually delivers rather than what the marketing sample achieved, given that a launch sample made on the pilot line is not evidence of process capability; so the sensory and appearance parameters are defined with reference standards or photographs rather than adjectives; so the shelf life is stated with the basis, the storage conditions assumed and what happens if the chain is broken; so the agreed action when a batch is marginal is written, as this is what prevents a technical disagreement becoming a delisting; and so the version, date and signatories are on the face of the document with a review interval. Specifications written this way keep customers and prevent claims.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including specifications, customer correspondence, recipes and complaint records. We are editors rather than food technologists or regulatory advisers, and we offer no view on formulation, specification limits, safety or compliance. What we can do is make the specification something the factory can actually meet.