Selling totes that only ever held food

Why the history is the value

A food-grade-history tote is one whose whole life is documented as food or beverage contents. It is the tote a grower can use for stock water or irrigation, and a brewer or syrup maker can reuse. A rinse cannot create that history afterward, so the record you keep today is the whole asset.

Food-grade history describes the other side: what the buyer asks to see. A tote with an unknown past is a recycle-only tote, however clean it looks.

What to keep and what to write down

• The old product label, left on the bottle or the cage.
• The supplier name and product, for each fill the tote has had.
• Dates, as close as you can get them.
• A note on any non-food use, even a single one. It ends the food history.
• The cap and the vent, closed since the tote was emptied.

Breweries and distilleries are used to this. Syrups, flavourings, concentrates and cleaning chemicals all arrive in totes, and the first three are food, while the last one is not. Keep them apart.

Keep food and cleaners apart

A site that takes in syrups and sanitizers has totes of both. A tote that held a sanitizer is not a food tote, even if it held syrup first. Stand the two groups in separate rows and tag each row, so nobody mixes them when the cage is wheeled out.

That is also the line the grade table draws. A food-history tote is sold as it is. A tote that held a chemical goes through the chemical-empties route instead.

Local sellers

The Brewers Association counts 344 craft breweries in Virginia, 132 in Maryland and 11 in the District of Columbia (2025 data). Breweries and distilleries describes what they empty, and food and beverage plants covers the larger producers and distributors.

Send the totes' size, count and the supplier names through the sell request. We read them against the grades and say what fits. We name no price.