North Yorkshire County Council has invested £20,000 in new labelling technology which it hopes will allow the school meal service to cut costs and promote healthy eating.
Nick Postma, deputy manager of service provider County Caterers, said: “The new system encourages trials of speciality sandwiches and a range which is encouraging staff and pupils to eat more regularly in the canteen as, if staff eat with us by choice, more pupils tend to follow suit.
“We can easily introduce more varieties of bread and healthier options in a slick, well labelled, quality controlled manner – for example, using a slogan such as ‘On Your Way To Five A Day’.
“This is leading to an increase in sales of healthy options and we are ahead of the game and more efficient as a result.”
Claimed to be the first of its kind in the UK, the system has been developed by Sheffield-based retail and solutions specialist FormKraft.
It slick and more informative packaging to be quickly produced for the 350,000 packaged sandwiches, salads, fruit and meals sold each year by the authority.
It also helps the caterer to speedily introduce healthy, low fat, gluten free, dairy free and vegetarian options by helping it design and make new labels available quickly and efficiently.
Among the challenges faced by FormKraft was to design a system able to programme all of the 137 sandwich fillings offered by North Yorkshire.
It is helping to streamline labelling on sandwiches and other products in its 32 outlets and save around £10,000 over the next three years.
Under the previous system, food labelling and descriptions were printed in bulk at the start of the year and sent out to each location.
But this led to waste, as labels for less popular products were never used and prices could not be included in case they went up during the year.
The system resulted in waste, ineffective hand-written labelling and an inability to easily introduce new food ranges.
Now, printers and keyboards located at each of the 32 outlets across the county, allow staff to access centrally-created labelling and print out what is required to meet local demand.
The system allows staff to react to the products popular at their outlet, as well as the food available to them, with chiller-safe labelling and a thermal transfer printer, which cuts out ink costs.
Simon Lindsell, director of FormKraft Distribution Limited, said: “The bespoke system we have devised is easy to use on the ground and gives the service’s managers much more control over processes.
“It also helps the service’s outlets compete with its competitors who are already using similar systems to this.
“North Yorkshire now has standardised and professional looking labelling on a par with anything on the high street – in a system that is easy to manage and use.”