Before a category manager will spend real time on your product, they need to know it can legally and safely be sold in Germany. That check happens before the commercial conversation, not after it. Treat it as the first gate, not the last formality.
Why certification comes first
German and wider European retailers carry legal and reputational liability for what's on their shelves, and they manage that risk by pushing food-safety assurance back onto suppliers through certification requirements. In practice, a category manager will not put a listing request forward for approval without a valid certificate on file. It's a pre-condition for the conversation to start, not a point that gets negotiated once a listing is agreed.
IFS Food
IFS Food (International Featured Standards) is a food-safety and quality management standard originally developed by German and French retail associations, which is part of why it remains the most commonly requested standard among German grocery retailers, particularly REWE and EDEKA. It's a GFSI-recognised standard (meaning it's benchmarked against the Global Food Safety Initiative's requirements), and certification is issued at a grading level, Higher Level or Foundation Level, following an audit by an accredited certification body against food safety management, HACCP, traceability, hygiene and product control criteria.
For private-label manufacturing specifically, Higher Level IFS certification is close to a hard requirement across the large German retailers. Branded suppliers are typically expected to hold at least a valid IFS (or equivalent GFSI) certificate as evidence of a functioning food safety system, even where the retailer isn't manufacturing the product itself.
BRCGS Food Safety
BRCGS Food Safety (formerly BRC, British Retail Consortium) covers substantially the same ground as IFS: a GFSI-recognised food safety and quality standard, audited against comparable criteria, with its own grading scale (from AA down through lower grades). It originated with UK retailers and remains more commonly requested by retailers with a UK or international buying footprint, but German retailers generally accept it as equivalent to IFS for supplier qualification purposes.
Retailers rarely insist on one standard by name over the other for branded suppliers. What they're checking is that you hold a current, in-scope certificate from a GFSI-recognised scheme, not which of the two logos is on it.
Retailers check for a valid GFSI-recognised certificate in the right scope, not for a specific standard by name. IFS and BRCGS are treated as functionally equivalent for supplier qualification.
Which one do you need
If you're manufacturing private label for a German retailer, follow that retailer's specific requirement; most will name IFS Higher Level explicitly in their supplier agreement. If you're bringing a branded product and don't yet hold either, IFS is the more defensible first choice for the German market given its origin and the volume of German retailers that reference it directly, but a current BRCGS certificate will not be a blocker in practice. What will be a blocker is having neither, or holding a certificate that's expired, out of scope for your product category, or from a scheme that isn't GFSI-recognised.
LMIV: the labelling baseline
LMIV (Lebensmittelinformations-Verordnung) is the common German short form for the EU Food Information to Consumers Regulation (EU 1169/2011). It sets the mandatory content for food labelling across the EU, and German retailers will not list a product whose labelling doesn't meet it. The core requirements to have covered before a first meeting:
- Full ingredient list in descending order of weight, with all fourteen designated allergens clearly emphasised (commonly bolded) within it.
- A nutrition declaration covering energy plus the six other mandatory nutrients (fat, saturates, carbohydrate, sugars, protein, salt), per 100g/100ml.
- Net quantity, and best-before or use-by date as applicable to the product.
- Country of origin, where required for the product category (mandatory for fresh meat, and increasingly relevant for other categories under evolving EU rules).
- The name and address of the responsible food business operator.
- All of the above in German. Food information has to be in a language the consumer in that market can readily understand, which in practice means a German-language label for German retail, not a translated insert.
None of this is negotiable at the listing stage: it's a legal minimum, and a retailer that lists a non-compliant label is exposed alongside the manufacturer. Get it right before the pitch, not as a condition attached afterwards.
Data, not just paperwork
Certification and labelling compliance increasingly has to exist as structured data, not only as PDFs in an email. Most large German retailers onboard new products through a GS1 Germany data pool (GDSN), expecting clean product master data (GTINs, dimensions, weights, ingredient and allergen data, certificate references) in the format their systems consume. A technically compliant product with certification and labelling in order but no clean data pool entry will still stall at onboarding. Building this alongside the category analysis, rather than after a listing is agreed, is one of the most common places manufacturers lose weeks they didn't expect to lose.
Not sure your paperwork is ready?
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