You've procured your supplies, found a commercial kitchen, put all your love and hard work into making and packaging it, found a retail location, and now you've got an amazing value-added food product you're ready to share with the world. All that's left is making a great label - one that represents you and your ethos and also meets state and federal requirements. That can be a tough balance to strike, so we're sharing some resources to help our food partners take that next step.
This month’s Roots Technical Assistance topic is: labeling.
If you sell any food products in packaged form, each package MUST be labeled (see below, for information required by state and federal regulations).
Roots has a label-maker that prints high-gloss, waterproof labels in all variety of sizes and shapes. We can offer technical assistance with designing and printing labels for our food hub partners at low cost. We have full control of the print run, so you can print small batches at a time, unlike most commercial printers.
If you are one of our food hub partners and would like help making labels, please contact Kasha Ho (kho[at]kkv.net).
What needs to be on a label?
Must be on main face of package:
- Name of product
- Net Weight/Volume
Must be on package (can be on main face or face immediately to the right):
- Ingredients
- Name and full address of your business (no p.o. boxes)
- Nutrition facts (not required for small businesses*, restaurants and vendors, raw produce, single ingredient foods, raw fish, game meats)
* What counts as a small businesses:
- you sell less than $500,000/year
- you sell more than $500,00/year in all products, but less than $50,000 in food
- you are a manufacturer with less than 100 full-time employees AND produce less than 100,000 units each year.
Click here for more information about labeling requirements: http://health.hawaii.gov/food-drug/files/2013/05/BASIC-GUIDELINES-FOR-FOOD-LABELING.pdf