Why Hand-Labeling Food at Restaurants Is a Bad Idea

Concerned a few years ago about the rumors of mandated food labeling by the U.S. Food & Drug administration, a group of Subway franchisees decided to look at the way employees labeled foods and the efficacy of the process in terms of food rotation, adherence to expiration dates and more.

What they found caused them to abandon hand-labeling all together—nearly four years before the FDA’s regulations requiring calorie and nutrition count be clearly labeled on menus and grab-and-go foods.

It’s nice to be ahead of the curve sometimes. Here’s what they found (and why you should ditch writing by hand on the food you sell):

Smiley-facesEmployees enjoyed the doodling that hand-labeling allowed, often producing flowers and smiley faces. Nothing wrong with a hand-drawn flower, but that artwork added time to the labeling process and subtracted an employee from the shift.

ConfusionThere were a few problems here. Writing on paper—and even masking tape at times—caused smearing if…