How often do you hear comments like “I’d love a gallon of this to take home.” or “Can I buy this in a local store?” Someday you might decide to take the plunge and sell beyond the patron’s table.
Congratulations, you’re now wearing a “Manufacturer” hat. Welcome to a new set of responsibilities, including mandatory nutritional labeling. In general you will be required to nutritionally label your product to sell it in bulk. The playing field has changed from table-top to top-shelf.
All the products on that shelf will have nutritional labels to allow informed choices. The first step in leveling the field is the serving size. It’s obviously easier to compare nutritional labels from different packages if they all use the same serving size.
Inside your restaurant you get to make your own choice for single servings. It’s not that simple for retail sales of bulk items for consumption at a later time. The FDA has standardized serving sizes you need to follow.
These serving sizes are named RACC (Reference Amounts Customarily Consumed). The RACC for an item is the result of surveys and research about food consumed at a single eating occasion. The guidelines also suggest descriptive text for the serving (cup, tbsp, pieces, slice, etc)
Let’s say you want to start selling whole pies. You can draw inspiration from other restaurants that have successfully made the leap, like Marie Callendar’s. Here’s how to choose a serving size (simplified):
- Look up your product in the RACC table. Pies are under “Bakery Products“.
- Get the RACC weight, given in grams. For pies, it’s 125 grams (4.4 ounces).
- Choose the fraction of your of your pie (1/4, 1/5, 1/6) that is closest in weight to the RACC weight (it doesn’t have to be an exact match). That fraction is your serving size.
That was easy, once you’ve slogged through all the FDA wording. Remember, this is a very simple example; your specific product may not just pop out of the regulations so easily. Those FDA documents are complicated so the analysis will not always be straightforward. We can help.
The serving size is just the start of the entire label, ending with nutritional content for that serving. These considerations and calculations are part of the full service you can receive from MenuTrinfo. Even if your plans today keep your sales in-house, MenuTrinfo has a solution for you.
Photo Credit: Dan Parsons
