Food labels for tiffin, meal prep and home food businesses in Canada

What every label should say

Whatever the rules say for your exact case, a customer opening a box should be able to tell what it is, whether they can eat it, and whether it's still good:

1. 1The name of the dish, in plain words: "Chicken curry with jeera rice".
2. 2Ingredients, from most to least by weight.
3. 3Allergens, in a "Contains:" line at the end of the ingredients.
4. 4Dates: when it was made, and a best-before or use-by.
5. 5Storage and reheating: "Keep refrigerated. Heat until steaming."
6. 6Your business name and how to reach you.

Canada's priority allergens

Health Canada lists these priority food allergens: eggs, milk, mustard, peanuts, crustaceans and molluscs, fish, sesame seeds, soy, sulphites, tree nuts, and wheat and triticale. Gluten sources must be declared too.

Watch for the ones that hide in Indian cooking: mustard (mustard oil and seeds in tadka), tree nuts (cashew paste in gravies, almonds in kheer), milk (ghee, butter, cream, paneer, curd), sesame (til in chutneys) and wheat (rotis, and asafoetida, which is often mixed with wheat flour).

When the federal rules apply

Federal rules (the Food and Drugs Regulations and the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations) set labels for prepackaged food: common name, ingredients, allergen declarations, net quantity, the dealer's name and address, a best-before date for food that keeps 90 days or less, nutrition facts, and English and French. There are exemptions, for example for some foods packaged and sold in the same retail place, and for some local foods. Use the CFIA checklist to see which apply to you.

Provinces add rules for home food. Alberta, for example, requires low-risk home-prepared foods to be labelled with information about the food and the producer.

Labels for every customer

A batch of the same dish can share one label design: use the free meal prep label template. A tiffin service is different: each box goes to a different person with different allergies and notes. Tiffinware prints one label per box from the day's orders, with the customer's allergies on it, so nobody has to remember that Priya can't have cashews.

An example label

Dates: made on, best before, use by

• Made on (or packaged on) tells the customer how fresh it is.
• Best before is your estimate of how long it keeps its quality in a fridge. For most cooked meals that's a few days; be conservative.
• Write dates the same way every time, with the month in letters (Nov 13), so 11/12 can't be read two ways.

Cross-contact

If a dish doesn't contain nuts but is made in the same kitchen, with the same pans, as a dish that does, a customer with a severe allergy needs to know. Keep allergen dishes on separate equipment where you can, and if you can't rule out cross-contact, say so honestly instead of promising "nut-free".

Practical tips

• Stick labels on the lid and the side, so they survive stacking.
• For freezer meals, use freezer-grade labels; ordinary paper labels peel when wet.
• Keep a copy of every recipe's ingredient list, so labels match what's actually in the pot when a recipe changes.
• Print, don't handwrite, once you have more than a few customers. It's faster and nobody misreads it.