Calorie labelling legislation – are you ready for 2022?
From April 2022 the legislation on providing calorie labelling for customers is set to change. We’re looking at the impact this could have on your business and the simplest, most cost effective way to provide transparency to your customers and be legislation compliant…
Calorie labelling legislation will require large businesses of 250 or more employees in England, including cafes, pubs restaurants and takeaways, to display the calorie information of non-prepacked food and soft drink items that are prepared for customers. Calorie information will need to be displayed at the point of choice for the customer, such as physical menus, online menus, food delivery platforms and food labels.
The measures, which form part of the government’s wider strategy to tackle obesity, will help to ensure people are able to make more informed, healthy choices when it comes to eating food out or ordering takeaways. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the impact that obesity can have on people’s health and the government are keen to ensure that everyone is supported in making healthier choices.
The impact of calorie labelling on the hospitality industry
However, whilst legislation and consumer demand for transparency around nutritional information is growing, the cost for the hospitality industry could be enormous, and this couldn’t come at a worse time. UK Hospitality has warned that these changes could cost operators up to £40,000 per menu. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. Taking digital control of nutritional information and allergen management represents significant cost-savings as well as providing robustness around allergen safety.
Kitchen CUT’s F+B Engine drives allergen and nutritional data at product level. This means that the nutritional information on your recipes, spec sheets and online menus is automatically generated using the information set against the product. As a result, there is less room for error, more time saved and more transparency for customers.
Get ready for calorie labelling legislation
Here are our top tips for getting ready for the legislation before it comes into force on April 1st 2022.
1. REVIEW YOUR PROCESSES
Product information is either built out using one of the many databases built into the solution, or by using supplier driven information through the supplier gateway – the choice is yours. You may wish your nutritional information to come from your suppliers or you may choose to manage nutrition using the online databases such as McCance and Widdowson or the USDA.
Having an internal policy which could even include supplier SLA’s is a key first step in how you company engage the new rules and could form one or a combination of the below:
- Managed and uploaded by Suppliers via the supplier Gateway (Vendor supplied). Once accepted in, this will automatically update the Products Nutrition and be visible under the Products ‘Nutrition’ tab
- Managed through your console utilising the Composition of foods integrated dataset (CoFID) or the USDA (Look up tool) via the new Nutrition’s settings Tab; outlined below:
You can review and amend the settings by going > Settings > Nutrition > Nutritional Data. From there, you will be able to enable either:
- Vendor supplied = ‘On’ – this will show the data provided from the supplier via the Supplier Gateway. Receiving Nutritional data through the supplier Gateway will post through to the Product Nutrition’s Tab.
- CoFids = ‘On’ – this will show the look up tool when editing a product and include this database .
- USDA = ‘On’ – this will show the look up tool when editing a product and include this database.
NB – you can have all 3 (recommended) or a combination switched ‘On’. ‘Vendor’ Supplied will always take priority and will overwrite any CoFids or USDA data that may have been entered against the product.
2. REVIEW AND ENGAGE WITH YOUR SUPPLIERS
If you would like to recieve nutritional information from your suppliers, then we recommend a supplier review to build out the process.
With nearly 1000 suppliers already on the Supplier Gateway, there is a good chance yours may already be engaged, set up and active. Contact your client services manager who will be able to confirm whether your key suppliers are already on the Gateway. If not, they will also be able to provide next steps for getting them set up and linked to your solution.
Depending on your requirements, your suppliers and data, getting set up can take 4-8 weeks. Therefore it’s vital that this process is started as early as possible if you wish to hit the April deadline.
3. BUILD OUT PRODUCTS INTERNALLY
Of course, with the databases fully linked in your solution, you don’t necessarily need the suppliers to post the data through to you. You can update product information internally very easily so that your team can make a quick start in building out nutritional information.
Once you’ve been sent supplier information, that can then be posted in at a later date to ensure greater accuracy.
To make a start on entering nutritional information against your products head to Settings > Nutrition > Nutrition Mapping Tool
The Nutrition mapping tool will allow the user to map products/ingredients to items in USDA/COFIDS – replacing the need to build out nutrition every time on each recipe.
NB – each page needs to be saved where changes are made – changes will be lost if not saved when applying filters or moving to another page.
Once your product’s nutrition is mapped out, the nutritional information appears under the product information. Then sub recipes and recipes containing that product will have their nutrition calculations updated automatically.
4. PUBLISHING TO YOUR GUESTS
Our eCommerce module enables you to build out guest facing digital menus – publishing live information to your customers in a easy to read format. Customers can access menus via a QR code generated within your business. This will enhance safety and reduce print costs, whilst keeping your menus adaptable and agile. In addition to this you’ll have the option to use a URL link or an embed code for your website. Allergens and dietary needs can be filtered to remove any dishes that are not suitable. System updates to nutritional information (coming in 2022) will also be published in real time. This will enable compliance with the forthcoming calorie labelling legislation.
If you would like further information please visit our Support Page – Nutrition You can also speak to your Client Services Manager to discuss options for acheiving compliance.
We know how busy Christmas and the new year can be so we also have a number of support packages. We can pick up not only project management, but also most of the data management – saving you time and driving efficiencies.
Find out more:
Find out more about Kitchen CUT or get a free online demo. Email sales@kitchencut.com or call +44 (0) 330 113 0050
You can register for a free trial here.