Nutrition Labeling: Serving Size for Bulk Orders
Over the last few weeks, we’ve spent time talking to the new manufacturer who may or may not be in the early phases of their journey to retail. Maybe they’ve been perfecting their amazing barbecue sauce and need some tips on labeling. But what happens when you’ve had major success with your product and you’ve entered mass production? What does labeling look like then? If you’re new to LabelCalc or you’ve grown with us and your product line has expanded, first of all, congratulations! Second, let’s take a moment to review breaking down those bulk recipes so that you can determine the appropriate serving size and correct nutrition information for your labels.
Understanding your product serving size doesn’t have to be difficult. There are only 2 numbers you need to know to create your nutrition facts panel.
Single Serving Size
You could be bottling your famous barbecue sauce by the bottle, the gallon, or a giant keg (that would be fun right?), when it comes to determining your product serving size, it all boils down to one thing: RACC. If you haven’t heard of this before, RACC stands for “Recommended Amount Customarily Consumed” and these measurements have been established by the Food and Drug Administration to help the consumer understand how much they should be consuming of a food item in one sitting.
This value is the first number you need to know. Whether your recipe yields 98lbs of barbecue sauce or a gallon, your nutrition facts panel information is built around the RACC serving size. For this reason, we’ve implemented a CFR tool that can help you determine the appropriate serving size according to FDA regulations.
The first number you need to know in order to break down bulk recipes is your RACC serving size.
As you can see in the example above, the nutrition information around your secret sauce is based on the RACC suggestion of 2 tbsp or 30mL. So whether you are breaking down thousands of fluid ounces or just a few, this number is crucial for determining the correct nutrition for your serving size.
Servings Per Container
Now, here’s where things can get a little tricky. Your servings per container are the next most important number you need to know. However, knowing which container that you need to get this value from is the key. If you sell sauce in bulk to restaurants, they probably aren’t buying consumer-sized bottles, because they use your sauce in high volumes. It’s likely that your sauce is sold to restaurants by gallon or multiple gallons in a larger container.
The container that your product is being sold in, is the container you need to determine your “servings per container”. For example, there are 256 tablespoons in 1 liquid gallon. Here’s where the math comes in. To determine your servings per container, you must take your individual serving size based on the RACC suggestion (in our case this value is 2 tbsp) and divide it into our liquid gallon.
It looks like this: 256 tbsp/2 tbsp= 126 servings per container.
So if you’re selling by the gallon, the servings per gallon of barbecue sauce are 126.
Now, if you’re selling larger containers, you have the foundation for those as well. If you are selling your barbecue sauce in 10-gallon containers and you know that your barbecue sauce yields 126 servings per gallon, then your servings per container in a large 10-gallon container would be 1,260.
Here’s the math: 126 x 10 = 1,260 servings per 10 gallon container.
Whether you are breaking down large bulk orders or small ones, only 2 numbers matter: your RACC serving size and your servings per container for the actual container that your item is being sold in.
