Algeria AgencyIndustries
Food and drink: the label is your first page
Your buyer reads you holding the product, on a shelf, in eight seconds. The website comes a long way after.
A food producer has a problem the other sectors in this series do not: the surface they are judged on is printed, run off in tens of thousands of copies, and cannot be corrected.
That surface is the label. It is what gets read on a shelf, in eight seconds, by somebody already holding a competitor’s product in the other hand. Everything digital arrives afterwards, and usually long afterwards.
So this article covers the label first, distribution second, and the website last — in the order these things actually decide your sales, which is not the order in which they get sold to you.
We do not list the mandatory particulars. They are set by regulation, they change, and they differ by product family; an article that enumerates them expires without saying so. We name who decides and send you there.
What your buyer actually reads on a shelf
They read three things, in this order: what it is, how much of it there is, and whether it was made here. Your brand name is not on that list, and only joins it after several purchases.
The consequence is that the largest type on your label should carry the product name rather than your logo. That is the reverse of what most studios produce, because a logo is what a client commissions and a product name is what a buyer looks for.
The second consequence concerns contrast. A shelf is lit from above, usually by fluorescent tubes, and a label designed on a backlit screen behaves differently under that light. The useful rule is to judge every draft printed, laid flat, under ceiling lighting.
The third concerns distance. Your label is seen from a metre before it is seen from thirty centimetres, and most drafts are never looked at from a metre while being designed.
None of this costs money. It costs order in the decisions: product name, contrast, distance, then everything else.
The date and the batch number are not graphic details
The durability date and the batch number are the two pieces of information deciding whether a product can be withdrawn cleanly when it has to be, and they are the two most drafts handle last.
The usual symptom is a variable print area that is too small, badly placed, or sitting on a printed background that makes the coding unreadable once the line is running. It gets noticed at the first production run, when the print is already paid for.
The rule is to reserve that area first, on a plain background, somewhere that stays reachable on the line. It is an industrial constraint before it is a graphic one, and it has to come from your packer rather than your designer.
Traceability is not an abstract administrative subject: it is the difference between withdrawing a batch and withdrawing a range. The cost of imprecision is paid once, and it is paid very dearly. And it is not settled at printing: what decides is the record made at packing, between the line and the lorry.
Ask your printer and your packer to write that constraint down before the design starts. It is a twenty-minute conversation that saves an entire print run.
Mandatory particulars: who decides, and why we do not list them
Food labelling is governed by Algerian regulation, and the requirements differ by product family — a juice, a cheese and a canned good do not carry the same obligations.
We do not enumerate them here, deliberately. An article listing mandatory particulars becomes wrong at the first regulatory change and goes on being read as though it were right, which is worse than saying nothing.
What we can say without risk of expiry: Arabic is required on the labelling, nutrition and health claims are governed, and origin cannot be claimed freely.
The practical consequence for a producer is simple: regulatory approval of the artwork comes before aesthetic approval, and it has to come from somebody whose trade that is. A design studio is not that person, and neither are we.
It is also why a launch calendar is built backwards: the print date is set by the approval date, not by the campaign date.
The phone decides the digital part, and that is measurable
The internet market observatory published by ARPCE counts, for the second quarter of 2025, some 59.10 million internet subscriptions in Algeria, of which 88.71% are mobile and 11.29% fixed.
For a producer the consequence is not a retailer’s. Your site is almost never read by a consumer: it is read by a buying-group purchaser, a distributor or a caterer checking you are a real business before calling back.
They do it from a phone, usually in a corridor, between two meetings. What they are looking for is short: what you make, in what quantities, where, and who to call. A twelve-page brochure answers none of those in that setting.
The second consequence concerns the code on the packaging. If it points at a heavy page or a file, it will not be opened twice — and a code nobody opens is label surface spent for nothing.
The rule is the same as everywhere in this series, with a different recipient: everything that decides has to fit one vertical screen, with no attachment.
- Mobile subscriptions88.71%
- Fixed subscriptions11.29%
ARPCE, internet market observatory, second quarter 2025
Your real customer is not the person who eats the product
As long as you do not sell direct, your customer is the distributor, the buying group or the shopkeeper. They decide whether your product exists on a shelf, and they do not have the consumer’s questions.
Their questions are: what rotation, what margin, what case format, how much shelf life remains at delivery, how reliable the supply is. None of those five appears on most producers’ sites.
Reliability carries the most weight and gets talked about least. A distributor prefers an acceptable product delivered every fortnight over an excellent one delivered whenever production allows, because a gap on the shelf costs them more than the difference in quality.
That changes what your communication has to prove. A photograph of a clean workshop and a monthly capacity in figures beat a story about the land, for that reader.
Keep the story: it serves the consumer, on the label and on social media. Just do not put it where your buyer’s five answers should be.
Remaining shelf life at delivery is a commercial argument
A product delivered with two thirds of its life ahead of it is not worth the same as one delivered at a third. The second occupies the same metre of shelf while promising more waste.
That is why remaining life gets negotiated, explicitly or not, and why a producer who guarantees it in writing gets better terms than one who never raises it.
It has a production consequence: extending shelf life is worth more commercially than people assume, and shortening the gap between production and delivery is worth as much.
It also has a consequence for what you write. A product sheet aimed at a trade buyer should carry total shelf life and the minimum guaranteed at delivery, which are two different numbers.
Neither needs a website to be communicated. They fit on a one-page sheet you send in a message, which is the real channel of this trade.
The product name is worth more than the brand name
A producer launching four lines often gives them four invented names, believing they are building a range. The buyer, meanwhile, is looking for a category and comparing prices per kilogram.
An invented name is defensible when advertising carries it. Without advertising it adds a step of translation between what the customer is looking for and what you sell, and that step costs sales.
The formulation that works is almost always the same: the common product name, then the qualifier that sets you apart, then the brand. In that order and in that typographic hierarchy.
There is a real exception, and it is the product with no obvious category. There an invented name is no obstacle, because there is nothing to translate — but the label then has to explain what it is, plainly, larger than anything else.
Protecting the name is a separate subject and it belongs before the print run: discovering after printing that a name is already registered is a dead loss nothing recovers.
Product photography is decided before packing
The photographs you will need — for sheets, catalogues, social media, platforms — are more numerous than expected and are almost always done too late, with whatever is to hand, after launch.
The cheapest moment to take them is the first print run, when the packaging is new, clean and unscratched, and the range is complete. Six months later, assembling one perfect example of each line is surprisingly hard.
The shots needed are few and always the same: the product alone on a neutral background, the product opened or served, a readable back view for the particulars, and a group shot for the range.
The back view is the one everybody forgets and the one distributors ask for, because they have to check the particulars without the product in hand.
It is a one-off cost whose result serves three to five years, which makes it one of the few investments in this article that can be said with certainty to pay for itself.
Selling direct changes everything, and not always for the better
Direct selling is appealing: better margin, a relationship with the customer, control of the price. It also brings three trades you do not practise — order picking, delivery, and after-sales.
On food, delivery adds a constraint other sectors ignore: the cold chain where it applies, and breakage where it does not. Both are paid on every order, not once.
The question to ask before starting is not "can I sell online" but "how many orders a week does it take before somebody handles this full time, and will I have them".
There is an intermediate form that is often better: selling direct on one line only, the one that travels best and carries the best margin, rather than on the whole range.
And a simpler one still: taking orders without paying online, for collection or local delivery. That avoids most of the complexity and captures most of the demand, at the start.
What to check before signing with a supplier
Who approves the label’s regulatory compliance, and whether that is written down. A studio accepting that responsibility without the competence puts you at risk; one that clearly declines it protects you.
What is handed over as print files, and in what form. An open file, with the fonts and the paths, and not a flattened export — otherwise your next change of pack size costs a whole new artwork.
Who owns the photographs and under what licence. They will serve you longer than the supplier will work for you.
What happens to your templates when the range grows. A range identity that did not anticipate the fifth line gets redone at the moment you have no time for it.
And one question specific to this trade: ask whether the supplier has worked with your printer, or at least spoken to them. Half the bad printing surprises come from there.
What actually gets measured
The number of outlets is the obvious measure, and alone it misleads: twenty outlets ordering once are worth less than five reordering every month.
The useful measure is the reorder rate: the share of your customers who placed a second order within three months. It is the only number separating a product that sells from a product that got listed.
The second is the gap between production and delivery, because it decides remaining shelf life, which decides your terms.
The third is the return or breakage rate by channel. It will tell you, often against your instinct, which channel is actually costing you money.
Those three numbers fit on one sheet and get read once a month. Note them today, before any change: in six months they are the only comparison you will have.
What we do, and what we refuse to do
What we will not do, and it is the most important point in this section: we do not approve the regulatory compliance of your labelling. The requirements depend on your product family and they change, and an agency that tells you "this is fine" without the competence exposes you to a risk it will not carry.
Nor do we promise a listing with a buying group, or volume. That depends on your price, your reliability and your capacity, and no agency has a grip on all three.
What we do: label artwork with the hierarchy that works on a shelf — product name first, contrast judged under ceiling light, the coding area reserved before anything else and agreed with your packer.
Open print files, range templates built for the line you do not have yet, the photography set shot at the first print run, and the one-page sheet your buyer will read on a phone.
And one thing to do without us, before calling: print your current artwork, lay it flat under the ceiling light, step back a metre, and ask somebody who does not know the product to say what it is. If the answer is slow, your problem is not your website.
Frequently asked questions
Does a producer who does not sell direct need a site?
Yes, but short, and aimed at a trade buyer rather than a consumer: what you make, in what quantities, where, and who to call. A twelve-page brochure answers nothing in that setting.
Can you tell us which particulars are mandatory?
No, and that is deliberate. They depend on the product family and they change; an article or an agency that enumerates them expires without saying so. Have the artwork approved by somebody whose trade that is, before printing.
Should we sell online?
Rarely the whole range at the start. One line, the one that travels and carries the best margin, or even taking orders without online payment, captures most of the demand without the three trades direct selling adds.
Can our product name be an invented one?
It can if you have advertising to carry it, or if the product has no obvious category. Otherwise it adds a translation between what the customer seeks and what you sell, and that translation costs sales.
When should the photographs be taken?
At the first print run, when packaging is new and the range complete. Six months later, assembling one perfect example of each line is surprisingly hard, and the back view — the one distributors ask for — is always missing.
Are there Algerian figures on this sector?
Production series are published, but no dated statistic on shelf purchasing behaviour that we could honestly quote here. The connectivity figures in this article are Algerian and published by ARPCE.
Where we come in
Your label laid flat under ceiling lighting, judged from a metre away, tells you what still reads. The shelf is harder than your desk.
- We draw the hierarchy that holds at that distance, not the one that pleases close up.
- We deliver open print files, with templates for the range still to come.
- We plan now for the reference you have not launched yet.
We do not validate your labelling’s regulatory compliance: mandatory statements, claims, origin — that belongs to a trade other than ours.
Read next
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Packaging is judged at a metre, beside a competitor. Three things get through at that distance; everything else waits to be picked up.
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