>>1124382Honestly Amazon has a lot of good products (see reviews), but check the restaurant / production facility supplier websites. While a lot of their stuff is geared for higher-volume applications, you should still be able to find things for this small concept.
The main things you have to keep in mind:
You need to control for either pH or water activity to prevent growth once sealed. Water activity would be applicable for dry(ish) goods, like granola and protein bars. Those types of products do not require heating of the actual product while sealing, just need to be properly vacuum sealed. For pH controlled products (wet products), there are two routes to go:
1) for high/strong acid (pH under 4.6) you simply need to have a machine that can heat the product to a certain temperature (typically 180F, and sometimes referred to as Hot Filling) and seal, OR
2) for low/weak acid (pH above 4.6) you need to have a high pressure machine that also heats the product, so you're cooking/filling the product in the retort pouch under extreme pressure and temperature followed by filling. There are some dangers involved with these machines, typically the cheaper ones though (it's a pressure cooker essentially).
I've been looking into this same project a lot the last month, mainly interested in filling retort pouches with beef stew (think Campbell's Chunky, but with less broth), but for those types of products it typically involves pressure canning (option 2 above).
