It is well-known that professional kitchens are stressful places. A report from Nestlé Professional’s CHEF explains that 81% of chefs have experienced poor mental health in their careers. Further, Nestle’s research highlights some of the key problems that contribute to stress within kitchens including staff shortages (58%), lack of time (43%), limited budgets (42%) and lack of daylight, with 41% saying this negatively impacts wellbeing. Throw these important concerns into the mix with the fact that running a profitable restaurant and kitchen is not easy at all, and then it is understandable why so many professionals are feeling the pressure.
Additionally, while many chefs and restaurant owners want to engage in the rewarding creative side of operating and managing a restaurant, the reality is that this comes with the burden of complying with food safety and waste management regulations. So, aside from coping with mental health challenges, staff shortages, business costs and time pressures, professional kitchens must ensure their operational processes are up to scratch too. For instance, do they comply with the latest food hygiene and waste regulations, and labelling requirements?
Jesus Lacalle, Southern Europe Sales Manager, BIXOLON Europe, explains more about the various waste management and labelling regulations that professional kitchens come up against, and how they can improve this aspect of their operations across the various kinds of kitchens out there. This includes restaurants, hospitals, schools, work place cafeterias, universities and care homes.
Regulating waste reduction
Most organisations face pressure to reduce waste today. Professional kitchens are certainly not exempt. In fact, their operations are rife with food waste, and in various countries across Europe we see attempts to reduce waste by mandating that organisations comply with relevant in-country regulations. For instance, across Europe the Food Information to Consumers (FIC) Regulation (EU No 1169/2011), covers allergen labelling, “Best Before” and “Use By” labelling – all of which have been put in place primarily to protect consumers from foodborne illnesses. Additionally, by ensuring clear and consistent labelling is in place, these regulations play a crucial role in reducing food waste, helping businesses and consumers make informed decisions about food consumption and storage.
At a country level, Germany, for example, is known for its strict waste management laws – and retailers and restaurants there must separate food waste to support recycling and bioenergy generation efforts. In contrast, France’s 2016 Food Waste Law mandates that any unsold edible food from supermarkets must be donated to charities, and that restaurants that exceed a certain size must track their waste and surplus food.
Portugal, in comparison, has its National Program to Combat Food Waste. Hospitality businesses here are encouraged to donate surplus food and adopt better labelling strategies that help with waste reduction, and which support food traceability. While in Spain, the 2022 Food Waste Law expects hospitality businesses to track food usage, and to partner with food redistribution platforms for unsold items. Meanwhile, in the UK, DEFRA incentivises organisations to adopt labelling technologies that reduce food spoilage, which inadvertently helps to reduce food waste.
Manual labelling processes are prone to error
While labels clearly have an important role to play in waste reduction, they also play a vital role in professional kitchens to support food production. Take this example, a large can of tomatoes is opened. A portion is used to make a meal, the rest is left in the can or transferred to another container. In many European professional kitchens, it is essential to store a sample of the food that was cooked with appropriate labelling information on it, including allergens and ingredients, production dates and “Use By/Best Before” information. In this example, it is also important to the regulators to label the left over tomato container, to indicate when that can was opened.
In either case labels are vital for recording and sharing information within kitchens. The problem, however, is that many kitchens currently use manual labelling processes to capture and display information for staff and customers. For example, recording information with a pen and paper, and sticking it to appropriate kitchen or food storage containers. On the surface, this seems like a good approach, but often the paper used isn’t adequate or waterproof; the labels fall off; handwriting can be illegible; wrong information is recorded; there is no standard look or feel – and all this excludes human error for now. Therefore, in this fast-paced regulatory-driven environment, is this really sufficient compared to the more effective real-time printed and linerless labelling solutions available for the industry to use? Especially when you consider that today, modern-day label and food-traceability solutions are cost-effective and straightforward to introduce into kitchens?
Accurate label information is vital
Natasha's Law, which came into effect in the UK in 2021, requires full ingredient and allergen labelling on pre-packed food for direct sale (PPDS), reinforcing the importance of accurate and clear food labelling. To meet these standards and improve food traceability, pre-printed labels can be highly effective. For instance, these labels can indicate the ingredients that were used in batch cooking, the production date of a particular batch, display allergen information, and provide essential information about the contents of food stored in containers.
Real-time printed labels can also be used to demonstrate when produce has been removed from freezers for defrosting, for instance, and can support ‘Use By’ and ‘Best Before’ management. Moreover, when this information is linked to a barcode on a label and integrated into a back-end traceability and data management system, kitchens gain powerful data-driven capabilities for inventory and process management. For instance, providing a true and detailed view of what stock is in the freezer or storage; what the status of fresh produce is; whether more is needed; and if kitchens need to use up certain items fast.
Meeting EU and Spanish food hygiene standards
While reducing waste is an imperative, meeting food hygiene standards across the UK and Europe will always be important for professional kitchens to achieve. In Europe, this means meeting the European Regulation from 2002 (178/2002) – but, what is more, within various countries in Europe there are local modifications for countries to follow to meet their own needs.
Take Spain, it has adapted aspects of this EU regulation according to its requirements. The country expects samples of food prepared in commercial kitchens to be stored appropriately for at least seven days, and that supporting food labels and data systems have the capability to enable kitchen operators to prove when items of food were produced, and that they have been stored correctly according to the regulation’s requirements. These measures have been put in place to protect consumers and businesses from food poisoning and any related repercussions.
But what exactly is a linerless label?
Variable length linerless label printing involves using a printer that has been configured to print essential food-related information onto a label that has no sticky plastic backing to peel off the label. When information is printed onto the label and leaves the printer, it can be torn off without a backing and applied directly to the food item to be labeled. Additionally, label printing comes in variable lengths, according to the amount of information required on the label. This benefits kitchens because it means they can achieve more ‘print’ from their rolls of labels.
Since there is no plastic backing on the linerless label, there is less plastic waste to be disposed of. So, additional disposal containers are not required. On the whole, this helps kitchens optimise label printing, and reduces waste from the entire labelling process.
Another key point is that these printers can be configured and aligned with restaurant front of house, back of house and wider back-end management systems. This is key as it helps ensure that systems are printing and recording accurate data – all of which informs the kitchen or restaurant operator about the status of their kitchens, assuming they’ve been effectively integrated into wider digital systems correctly, which label suppliers should support with. Finally, as you’d expect, paper, adhesives and inks used within appropriate label solutions comply with various food safety regulations too.
Conclusion
The European Commission says that there are around 600 million cases of foodborne illnesses yearly. Eurostat data reports that European citizens collectively waste around 59 million tonnes of food yearly, saying 54% comes from households and the other 46% from supply chains. Additionally, the UK charity Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) estimated in 2021 that total UK food waste came to 10.7 million tonnes. The most waste, by weight, comes from households (60%), farms (15%), manufacturing (13%) hospitality and food service (10%) and retail (2%).
While professional kitchens face numerous challenges -- including mental health pressures and running businesses profitably -- they need to ensure that they are meeting the various food hygiene and waste management regulations on the market today, and demonstrate that they have the right technologies and processes in place to help reduce waste and improve hygiene. With that in mind, printed linerless labels provide kitchens a modern, accurate, eco-friendly food labelling and traceability solution that enables them to meet these requirements and regulatory commitments.