The Importance of Restaurant Labels
Restaurant labels help improve kitchen organization and food safety while reducing food waste. They are also essential for implementing HACCP, a food management system that helps restaurants reduce the risk of foodborne illnesses.
A kitchen labeling system can save your restaurant time and money in the long run. Using the right label will ensure that your staff can easily locate food items while reducing the risk of food-related illnesses.
Accurate Menu Accuracy
Achieving accurate menu accuracy is crucial to a restaurant’s reputation. Inaccurate nutritional information, or a lack thereof, can cause customers to question the authenticity of the food served at your establishment.
Restaurants can help ensure menu accuracy by utilizing accurate analysis tools, internal quality assurance programs and regularly scheduled training quizzes on items such as how many pickles go on a chicken sandwich. This helps build a solid foundation to guarantee accurate menu information for the long haul.
When a food item’s serving size differs from the calorie count that was used to create its analysis, it’s important that your restaurant has a disclaimer in place for employees to reference as necessary. This can be posted in-store or online and should be positioned near other restaurant disclaimers that highlight allergens and gluten-free ingredients.
Labels are also an excellent way to organize inventory in your restaurant’s kitchen and make it easier for staff to identify and move products. This can help restaurants meet HACCP guidelines and improve daily operations efficiency by reducing wasted movement of food products.
Food Rotation Labels
Food rotation labels help restaurants stay organized and adhere to the FDA’s standards for proper date labeling of commercially prepared foods. These labels also help prevent spoilage, reduce kitchen waste and ensure that prepped foods are used first to avoid contamination.
These food labels can be purchased in a variety of colors and styles. They can be dissolvable, removable or permanent depending on a restaurant’s needs. Some labels have tamper evident features that warn employees not to open the package. Others use open dating or closed dating, a combination of letters and numbers that indicates when the product is best.
The simplest way to keep track of inventory and food rotation is by using day labels. These labels have pre-printed lines for items, dates and employee initials and are easy to read in a busy kitchen. Using these labels decreases the amount of prepped foods that are accidentally forgotten about, leading to wasted food and a bad restaurant review.
To-Go Meal Labels
Whether they’re ordering at a restaurant’s counter, curbside pickup or through delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats, customers can benefit from having food labels on their takeout containers. This helps reduce the number of germs that can be spread by unnecessary contact.
Labels can also provide a professional and organized look for prepared meals and beverages, which customers appreciate. It’s also easy for employees to separate and identify items that they have already packaged, saving them time from having to touch each container numerous times.
Finally, labels can help reduce waste by providing a quick way to mark down the expiration date of food or beverage items that need to be brought to the front of the inventory as per your kitchen’s food rotation guidelines. This can prevent over purchasing and reduce the amount of food your restaurant has to throw away as it spoils.
Delivery Labels
Whether it’s delivery or takeout, customers appreciate the extra security that restaurant labels provide. A simple seal over a container flap can help protect food from sneaky or untrustworthy delivery people, a concern that’s especially important as more and more people turn to services like DoorDash and Uber Eats. A quality label can also serve as a branding opportunity that allows you to display your logo and color theme on the front of every order. Make sure to create a test print before printing your final delivery labels so you can adjust settings and ensure that the design fits properly on the label sheets.