Food and Beverage

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Food and beverage companies get legal counsel that protects your brand, keeps your labels and supply chain agreements clean, and handles the FDA scrutiny that comes with selling things people eat and drink.

Food and beverage is a brand-first, regulation-heavy business, and the legal work has to match. MC Law represents manufacturers, beverage makers, restaurant groups, and food-tech startups on the trademarks, packaging, supply contracts, and FDA compliance that decide whether a product reaches shelves and stays there. Our attorneys started as engineers, so we read your formulations, production data, and compliance systems without needing them dumbed down first.

Protecting Your Brand

In this category, the brand often is the business. We build trademark portfolios that cover your names, logos, and product lines, and we protect the packaging and trade dress that make customers reach for your bottle instead of the one beside it. When copycats and counterfeiters show up, we go after them. We also draft and manage licensing deals so your brand can expand into new products and markets without losing control of how it gets used.

FDA and Labeling Compliance

Few industries are policed as closely as this one. We advise on FDA food safety rules, ingredient and nutrition labeling, health and marketing claims, and the state-by-state requirements that trip up companies expanding into new regions. We also help with import and export obligations and recall readiness, so when something goes wrong you already have a plan instead of scrambling. The goal is to keep your claims defensible and your products legal to sell.

Supply Chain and Commercial Deals

Your product depends on co-packers, ingredient suppliers, distributors, and retailers, and each relationship rides on a contract. We draft and negotiate manufacturing, supply, and distribution agreements that set quality standards, allocate risk, and spell out what happens when shipments slip or ingredients run short. We also handle the broader commercial transactions, from private-label arrangements to retailer terms, so growth does not create exposure you did not see coming.

Frequently asked questions

Your name, logo, and distinctive packaging are protectable through trademarks and trade dress, and a strong, distinctive mark is usually your most valuable and enforceable asset. A recipe, by contrast, is hard to protect: lists of ingredients are not copyrightable, and disclosing a recipe in a patent means publishing it. Most food companies protect their formula as a trade secret, keeping it confidential and limiting access, which is exactly the model behind famously guarded formulas.

Labeling draws scrutiny from both the FDA and plaintiffs' lawyers, so claims have to be accurate and defensible. Terms like natural, healthy, no added sugar, and specific health claims are regulated or litigated, and class actions over misleading labels are common even when the FDA never gets involved. Get allergen disclosures, net-quantity, and ingredient statements right, and have substantiation ready for any marketing claim before it goes on the package.

Nail down food-safety responsibilities, quality specs, and who bears the cost and liability if a batch is contaminated or has to be recalled. Address ownership of your formula and any improvements the co-packer develops, indemnification, insurance, and your right to audit their facility. Recall mechanics matter most in practice, because that is the moment when an unclear contract turns a manufacturing problem into a fight over who pays.

The FDA can issue warning letters, demand corrective action, and, for many foods, oversee recalls, and under FSMA you are expected to have preventive controls and traceability in place beforehand. Speed and documentation drive how a recall plays out, so you want a written recall plan, clear records, and counsel involved early to manage regulator communications and downstream liability. Handling it well also limits the consumer-litigation exposure that usually follows a public recall.

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