How to Create a Nutrition Label That Stands Out Across Food Industries

Wondering how to create a nutrition label? Knowing your nutrition can take your business to the next level.

Any growing food business eventually reaches a point where they need to figure out how to best handle their nutrition labeling needs. It’s obvious that nutrition facts help support transparency, promote safety, and allow for informed consumer choices.

However, the actual process of creating FDA-compliant nutrition facts labels can feel burdensome to food businesses.

This was the case for Lev Berlin and Slant Shack Jerky. Having a custom jerky company with over 60 flavor combinations meant that expensive lab analysis or clunky online solutions weren’t a viable option.

So this Princeton grad designed his own nutrition label generator and analysis platform, ReciPal, and along the way found that nutrition labels can be business differentiators instead of distractions.

In this post, we’ll look at nutrition labeling through the lens of a few types of food business – CPB brands, restaurants, and manufacturers/co-packers — explore the requirements and, most importantly, discuss the opportunities to use nutrition labeling like ReciPal to take your business to the next level.

How to create a nutrition label (two options)

Regardless of your business type, there are two general options to get started creating a nutrition label.

The first option involves lab analysis. In this case, you send food samples of your product to a lab that will test it and return the necessary nutrient values and information. From there, you’re still responsible for following all the nutrition labeling regulations and formatting rules. As mentioned, this process can be timely and expensive, especially if you have a number of product variations.

The second option is nutrition database analysis. If you go this route, you use the known nutritional values of ingredients, scale them based on the amounts used in your recipes, and aggregate the information to get to complete your nutrition label.

While this can be difficult to do by hand, nutrition labeling software allows you to produce and customize accurate labels that meet compliance requirements in just minutes. All you need to know is your product recipes.

5 Steps to create a nutrition label with database analysis

1. Search the ingredient database
2. Add the individual ingredients to your recipe
3. Select the proper quantity and unit for each ingredient (e.g., ½ cup)
4. If necessary, set waste and moisture loss to reflect the cooking processes
5. Indicate the yield of the recipe (i.e. serving size, number of servings)

That’s it! With online tools, all of the formatting and rounding rules are automatically applied and you can instantly choose between a variety of label types, customizing the style to your product’s needs.

Now that you know how to create nutrition labels, let's learn how to make them differentiators in your business for:

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands

The goal of many CPG brands is to become a staple product on consumers’ grocery lists. Whether starting at a local farmers market or backed by venture capital, the retail space is crowded. There’s limited real-estate and in order to cut through the noise, new entrants need more than just a great recipe.

What are CPG food labeling requirements?

While there are certain exemptions for small businesses, if your goal is to break into major retail then nutrition labels are a must. Retailers that have more than $50,000 of food sales and more than $500,000 of total sales need nutrition fact panels on food items they sell. So if you want to be in any major store you need a nutrition facts on your food labels.

What’s the opportunity for CPG brands?

If you’re looking to stand out at farmer’s market or local shop, simply having nutrition labels will help elevate your brand’s professionalism and transparency. However, since products at major retailers will all require nutrition facts labels, you’ll need to be intentional about using your nutrition facts to stand apart from the competition and gain traction. Here are some ways you can do that:

• Choosing Ingredients: With nutrition labeling software programs, you can quickly do research and development without having to send your food off to a lab. In order to highlight your product’s unique value proposition, you can experiment with how recipe ingredient substitutes affect your product’s nutrition (of course you’ll have to make sure it still tastes great).
• Competitive Analysis: Let’s face it, in most cases your product isn’t creating an entirely new category. This means there are existing benchmarks that you will be compared against. So minor differences can actually be compelling selling points. Think about brands battling over calorie count. With modifications to your recipe’s formula, the nutrition label can position you as a class leader for whatever metric matters most - carbs, protein, sodium, etc.
• Nutritional Claims: While not everyone scrutinizes the nutrition fact panel, nutrition claims like low-fat or high in fiber are great ways to make your value proposition jump out to consumers. It’s important to keep in mind that most claims are regulated, meaning you’re only allowed to make these claims if your nutritional content falls into the acceptable range. Nutrition label software will automatically alert you when you qualify for a claim.

💪 Pro tip for CPB brands

One of the best ways for CPG brands to stand out is through a clear ingredient statement. Easy to recognize and pronounce ingredients help build trust in your product.

While USDA Organic Certification is a rigorous process that not all businesses are ready or able to pursue, you are allowed to call out certified organic ingredients within your information panel even if your product is not organic certified.

Take Good Day Granola, for example.

The audience for granolas is notoriously a crowd that's conscious of making healthier choices. If you have an organic ingredient list, that's a great selling factor. While the product as a whole is not USDA organic certified, this brand leverages the ingredient statement to highlight its organic additions.

Restaurants

Restaurant owners might think they’re off the hook with nutrition fact panels, but there are a number of ways that knowing the nutrition facts can help massively build a brand.

Take Matthew Pips, owner of Hey Juan Burritos. This locally famous restaurant has been proudly serving Humboldt County since 1982. Matthew took over the 750 square foot operation back in 2018 and was looking to expand his reach even though he wasn’t yet ready to expand their footprint.

Bottling up their iconic sauces, Matthew expanded his business channels with a CPG offering that leveraged his brand loyalty.

“I wanted to grow the business and share our flavors, so I decided the best way to do this would be to bottle our most popular and unique flavors and sell them via retail distribution.”

Many restaurants have successfully cashed in on their brand recognition by creating retail products.

One of the best examples of this is the partnership between Starbucks and PepsiCo that started over 20 years ago when they created the ready-to-drink coffee category with the bottled Frappuccino. Now their ready-to-drink retail product line generates over a billion dollars each year.

What are restaurant food labeling requirements?

If you’re looking to turn a fan-favorite product from your restaurant into a retail offering, all of the CPG requirements will apply. That said, if you’re only selling it inside your retail establishment, you would be exempt as long as you fall under the sales thresholds.

However, there are cases when restaurants need to share the nutritional information of their food. The FDA guidelines mandate that nutrition information must be made available for restaurants and similar retail food establishments that are part of a chain with 20 or more locations.

If you fall into this category, you must disclose the number of calories contained in standard items on menus and menu boards.

For standard menu items, upon request, you also need to provide:

• Total calories
• Total fat
• Saturated fat
• Trans fat
• Cholesterol
• Sodium
• Total carbohydrates
• Sugars
• Fiber
• Protein

What’s the opportunity for restaurants?

• Expand Reach: Creating a retail product means that every shelf you’re on is an advertisement for your restaurant. In this way, you’re not only creating a new revenue stream, but generating awareness of your existing revenue stream. If people discover your signature sauce in a grocery store and love it, they’re more likely to want to try out the rest of your menu items. Further, even if you only sell your products within your own restaurants, the customers who bring it home will help share it with family and friends, while incorporating your brand into their own creations.

• Define Your Brand: For many restaurants, the ingredients list and nutritional information of menu items is a mystery. However, sharing your nutritional information (even when it’s not a requirement) is a great way to show what you value and how you stack up against the competition. Are you using organic ingredients? Are your offerings high in protein or antioxidants? Creating more transparency around what you’re serving can help to better define your brand and capture your target audience. A Chipotle claim to fame is that they have just 53 real ingredients and the hardest one to pronounce is chipotle.

• Product Insights: When updating menu items you can immediately see how changes to ingredients or their quantities will affect a meal's nutrition. In this way, you can workshop new dishes engineered to deliver on your value proposition. On top of that, recipe cost calculators within nutrition labeling software gives you insights into recipe cost breakdown so you can not only see how changes to ingredients affect nutrition, but your bottom line as well.

💪 Pro tip for restaurants

For restaurant nutritional information, the FDA does not mandate the format in which information needs to be displayed. However, leveraging the standard nutrition facts panel format can help consumers more easily read and digest the information.

Plus, online nutrition label makers can easily embed NFPs on your website and they will be automatically updated with any changes to your recipe.

Food Manufacturers and Co-Packers

Food manufacturers and co-packers obviously play a huge part in how products are made at scale. Co-packers enable brands to accelerate growth by handling the large scale cooking and processing of products as well as the product packaging and labeling.

The ability to easily and efficiently create compliant nutritional facts for clients can be a differentiator for any manufacturer/co-packer working to grow their business.

What are the food labeling requirements for manufacturers and co-packers?

The labeling requirements for manufacturers are the same as for any CPG brand. However, one aspect that manufacturers commonly need to account for is a wider diversity of products.

With many different types and sizes of packages, manufacturers need to understand which label types are best suited for certain products and how to effectively maximize brand real-estate while maintaining food safety compliance.

What’s the opportunity for food manufacturers/co-packers?

• In-house Capabilities: As a co-packer, being able to provide nutritional labeling capabilities is a huge selling feature to clients. The FDA labeling requirements are often the most difficult part for food businesses to navigate, so being able to take this off of clients’ plates adds tremendous value. On top of that, if you bring these capabilities in house you can significantly reduce costs and increase your own margins.

• Enhance Flexibility: One thing clients look for in manufacturers is how nimble they can be to changes in a product line. Using seasonal and limited-edition offerings is one way brands put their products in the spotlight. For example, in 2018 Oreo brought in over $3 billion in annual sales and customers who bought limited-edition products bought 50 percent more than the average buyer. In order to help clients utilize this strategy, manufacturers need to be able to adapt packaging (and its nutritional components) effectively. The right software can make these changes quick and effortless.

• Easily Share Specs: For manufacturers, the most common way of sharing approved supplier nutritional info is through 100 gram spec sheets. So having an easy way to generate this info is essential. Rather than having to figure out separate nutritional values per serving for consumer labeling and per 100 gram for your spec sheet, nutrition analysis software produces both of these for you with the touch of a button.

💪 Pro tip for food manufacturers and co-packers

The business name and address, is a required component of the information panel (along with the nutrition fact panel, ingredient statement, and allergen declarations). If a product is not manufactured or distributed by the company whose name appears on the label, then the language needs to convey this. For example, “manufactured for” or “distributed by”.

Putting it all together

No matter what food industry you’re in, having a solid handle on your nutrition is a competitive advantage. While sometimes labeling requirements can seem like red tape, if done correctly this information can actually be a lever of growth. In fact, even when it’s not required, food businesses should consider how they can better position themselves through their use of nutrition analysis.

Lev Berlin started by just trying to solve his Jerky company’s nutritional analysis dilemma, but over the past decade his company, ReciPal, has supported tens of thousands of businesses through the process.

Whether you’re a CPG brand, restaurant, food manufacturer, or co-packer – knowing your nutrition can help take your business to the next level and nutrition labeling software like ReciPal means you don’t have to be a food scientist to figure it out yourself.

This guest post was contributed by Jack Scotti, Director of Marketing at ReciPal.