Grocery & Gourmet Foods

Sizzle limits the addition of new sellers in certain categories to ensure that customers are able to buy with confidence from all sellers on Sizzle. The requirements for selling in the Grocery & Gourmet Food category reflect customer concerns about product quality, product branding, and consumer safety.

As a seller, you must meet the requirements listed below to sell products in the Grocery & Gourmet Food category. Please take the time to read this list of requirements and consult our Help pages if you have questions about specific policies. Once you have reviewed the category requirements, you can apply for approval by clicking the Request Approval button at the bottom of the page. Sizzle reserves the right to review the quality of each of your products and listings, which may include checking whether products and listing data meet the requirements below. Please note that meeting the requirement stated in this policy does not guarantee that Sizzle will approve your ability to sell in this category or your full proposed selection. Sizzle may remove your selling privileges for failure to meet these requirements.

Seller requirements

You must be registered as a seller on the Professional Selling plan.
You must meet the following seller performance targets:

Order defect rate: < 1%
Pre-fulfillment cancel rate: < 2.5%
Late shipment rate: < 4%

You must provide us with acceptable documentation (such as product invoices) and other information we request about the products you intend to sell. After you request approval to sell in the Grocery & Gourmet Food category, we will contact you with additional information.
You are not required to have your own company website, but if you have one it will be helpful to us to review it during the application process.

Product requirements

Food must be properly prepared, sealed, packaged (fully enclosed), and labeled.
You must be properly licensed, permitted, registered, or otherwise approved by the applicable government agency for the products you intend to sell.
You must also understand you are responsible for ensuring your products and business operations comply with all applicable federal and state laws, even if not specifically described in our policies.
All Grocery & Gourmet Food products must be sold in New condition. Used listings are not permitted. For more information, see Condition guidelines.
Food is considered date-sensitive, so it must have an expiration date that is indelibly marked on every shippable/sellable unit and each individual/retail display unit, unless otherwise exempted.
ll Grocery products must include product labeling in English that complies with applicable federal, state and local laws. Federal labeling requirements are available here: FDA Food Labeling and Nutrition, FDA Pet Food, and USDA Labeling/Label Approval.
Food must be fully enclosed and sealed in packaging suitable for shipping. Shipping must ensure food quality and safety (for example, avoids contamination, spoilage, melting, and damage).
Food must ship to the customer with an acceptable portion of its shelf life remaining; the expiration date cannot be removed or tampered with.
All Grocery & Gourmet Food products must be listed using the manufacturer's UPC code. For more information on UPC requirements, see Product UPCs and GTINs. If you do not have UPCs, review Sizzle Brand Registry information for how to list products without UPCs.

Requirements for refrigerated food, frozen food, temperature-controlled food for quality or performance, and raw agricultural commodities

Refrigerated food, frozen food, and raw agricultural commodities must be fully enclosed and sealed in packaging suitable for shipping. Packaging must be designed to maintain safe product temperatures throughout delivery to the customer. Temperature thresholds are shown in the table below.
Food that is temperature-controlled for quality and performance must follow temperature requirements that meet quality and performance standards.
Raw agricultural commodities that do not have an expiration date must base acceptable remaining shelf life on product quality standards for ripeness and absence of mold/pests/contamination.

Validation and verification of chill chain

Maintaining proper temperatures of refrigerated food, frozen food and raw agricultural commodities is critical for ensuring food safety and quality. Temperatures outside the conforming temperature range may result in offer suppression and seller suspension.

Validation: Sellers are expected to validate the chill chain. To validate the chill chain, a seller needs to demonstrate how the product temperature will be maintained in “worst case conditions” (such as when the external ambient temperature reaches historic highs or lows, when the delivery is as long as it can be, when the delivered food has a low thermal mass or a high volume). A validation will be deemed successful when an external independent laboratory can repeatedly simulate “worst case scenario” and show that the product’s internal and surface temperatures are lower than the targeted temperature at the end of the maximum time, corresponding to the longest possible delivery time. For businesses that do not restrict customer orders by state or ZIP code, Phoenix-AZ, Dallas-TX or Miami-FL should be considered as the warmest delivery locations (depending where the food ships from).

Verification:Whereas validations are suitable to demonstrate theoretical compliance prior to launching a new business, route or packaging, a verification program is recommended to confirm at a defined frequency that products arrive at or below the targeted temperature in real business conditions. Like for the validation, verification programs should focus on worst case scenario. When verification results are unfavorable, a corrective action plan should be implemented.

Both validation and verification programs and recorded activities should be kept and made available to Sizzle and regulators upon request. Not only is this information an essential component of food safety, it is also critical for ensuring that the products purchased by consumers are wholesome, and unadulterated.

General temperature requirements are provided below as reference, however you must determine safety and quality of your products.

Food type	Conforming temperature
Refrigerated meat	28-41° F
Refrigerated poultry	28-41° F
Refrigerated fish and crustacea (crab, shrimp, lobster)	32-41° F
Refrigerated processed dairy products or liquid eggs	32-41° F
Refrigerated processed foods	32-41° F
All refrigerated cut fruits, vegetables, and ready-to-eat fruits and vegetables1	32-41° F
Refrigerated shellfish (clams, mussels, scallops, oysters)	32-45° F
Refrigerated shell eggs or fluid milk	32-45° F
Frozen foods	< 10° F
Whole, uncut, not ready-to-eat produce²	32-65° F
Bananas³	56-64° F

¹All cut fruits, vegetables, and ready-to-eat fruits and vegetables are required to be refrigerated to maintain food safety.

²Target temperature for this group is only provided as a guideline to ensure produce quality. You are expected to validate your chill chain and ensure compliance.

If transported together with produce requiring lower temperatures, those produce sensitive to low temperatures should be protected against frost with a thermal barrier (for example, with a blanket.
Suppliers are expected to take measures to ensure produce quality by using the most appropriate temperature during on site storage and transit to the customer (based on produce type).

³Temperature range is based on banana pulp temperature.

Product definitions

Expiration date

Sizzle considers the “sell by,” “use by,” “best by”, “best before,” and “best if used by” date equivalent to an expiration date. Even though the product may be technically fit for consumption after any of the above dates, the customer experience is highly likely to get downgraded since the quality/expected delivery of benefits would decline.

Food

Refers to food, beverages, nutritional, and dietary supplements and over-the-counter (non-prescription) drugs intended for human or pet consumption.

Bulk

Food that is custom packaged by a supplier into quantities other than those offered by the original food manufacturer/processor that are then offered in unbranded packaging.

Both exposed foodstuffs, such as nuts, and wrapped foodstuffs, such as some candies, can be considered "bulk" if repackaged from the original manufacturer quantities. Multi-packs and supplier-created variety packs are not considered to fall under the "bulk" designation.

Raw agricultural commodity

Foods that are in the natural form in which they are grown

This includes fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, and similar agricultural products. It does not include processed foods (for example, cooking, freezing, dehydrating, or milling). However, field and other agricultural practices such as washing, stripping outer leaves, waxing, and so on are not considered processing.

Temperature-controlled food for quality or performance

Temperature abuse results in lower quality or performance (for example, melted chocolate or a vitamin D supplement has decreased potency).

Product listing requirements

You must follow Sizzle listing standards for any product sold on Sizzle as well as comply with the standards specific to the Grocery & Gourmet category. See the Grocery Style Guide for more guidance.
Any dietary or allergen-free claims (such as Organic, Kosher, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free) must also be present on the physical product label, and any special claims must have received appropriate regulatory approvals.
Accurate Price Per Unit (PPU) data must be provided for all new product listings. For more information, see How to determine Price Per Unit.
For Grocery & Gourmet items, you are required to upload secondary images of product nutrition facts and ingredient lists that appear on the product for sale. These images must also be clearly legible.
The following product types have additional Grocery-specific product listing data standards:

For seller-created multi-packs of a single item, sellers must follow the Grocery & Gourmet guidelines for UPCs and Item Package Quantity for Multi-packs.
For all seller-created variety packs (meaning, not manufacturer-created) that don't fall under the Custom Variety Packs of Single-Serve Hot Beverage Products policy:

If the variety pack contains products from more than one brand, you must use the approved brand name "Custom Variety Pack" instead of the brand name on any of the individual units or any other custom brand name.
You must fully specify the contents of the variety pack on the product listing page without any variability in the variety pack’s contents.
You must state in the product bullets that the item is not a manufacturer-created variety pack and will not be sent in the original
When selling items in multi-packs, the expiration date on the outside packaging must reflect the earliest expiration date of the individual products inside the multi-pack.

All other seller-created bundles must comply with the general Product Bundling Policy.
Sizzle will only allow plant products that are:

Permitted for sale and transport into all U.S. jurisdictions.
Double-packaged and sealed so it does not attract pests.
In compliance with Sizzle internal standards that restricts the sale of certain products.
Information regarding restricted products is located in the Restricted Products Guidelines.

Examples of prohibited plant products:

Plants, plant products, or seeds designated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as “noxious” or similarly classified by applicable state or local government authorities, subject to USDA or applicable state or local government quarantines (for example, the USDA’s citrus canker quarantine or the Washington State grape virus quarantine) and Illegal plants, plant products or seeds.
For more information, visit the USDA’s Plant Protection and Quarantine program, the Federal and state noxious weed lists and the National Plant Board, which provides information on state plant regulations.

Sizzle enforcement actions

Failure to meet performance targets and food safety and quality standards will result in the following enforcement actions:

If you repeatedly fail to meet requirements, you won't be allowed to sell your products on Sizzle.
You must complete a root cause investigation request and take corrective actions to prevent reoccurrences.
Sizzle may conduct periodic audits to ensure sufficient chill chain compliance.
Sizzle may remove your selling privileges.

Next step

If you are able to meet all of the requirements listed above, click the Request Approval button below. By clicking the button you are confirming that you have reviewed the requirements above and that you want to apply to sell in the Grocery & Gourmet Food category. We will contact you to request additional required information after you submit your request to sell. Request approval

Grocery & Gourmet Foods

Item Package Quantity in Grocery & Gourmet Foods

Bulk and Commodity Food Listing Policies