Count On It food labels feature in Food & Drink Technology magazine

Count On It food labels (and myself) have just been featured in Food and Drink Technology International magazine - the article is as follows:-

LABELLED WITH LOVE
31 July 2009

Fed up with her family’s food wastage, Lyndsey Young was passionate about finding a solution…

As she tossed yet another jar of half-used pesto in the bin, Lyndsey Young decided enough was enough. Too many half-eaten jars of food had gone the same way. Yet she hated wasting food and only did so because she could never remember how long it had been languishing in the fridge.

“We all know that, once opened, most products have to be consumed within a certain amount of time,” says the mum-of-two from Bottesford in Leicestershire. “But there was always so much going on at home, I found it difficult to remember when something was first opened or stored.

“I was always throwing away half-used jars and leftovers because I was never sure how long they had been in my fridge. Rather than risk giving it to my young sons, I discarded it.”

But Lyndsey resented such wastefulness, and was sure others felt the same way. So she arranged for some market research to see if a cross-section of women also binned food for the same reason. The results of the research confirmed her suspicions. And so Lyndsey, 41, set about devising a solution and decided to fund her mission with the £15,000 she had won three years previously on TV quiz show Deal Or No Deal.

“Within days I had come up with the concept of stickers featuring scratch-off panels which allow consumers to mark on a jar or packet the date the product was first opened, stored or frozen,” she explains. “I had a name too – the Count On It (COI) label. Quite simply, it acts as a memory jogger, helping busy households safely track the life of their food.”

Feedback on trial samples led to the development of a prototype, and – with the support of government-funded business advisory group Business Link – just five months after she first came up with the idea in April last year, Lyndsey’s labels were in full-scale production.


“As the labels help to address the problem of food waste, which continues to be in the public eye due to the current economic climate and WRAP’s LoveFoodHateWaste campaign, and more and more people are rediscovering the joys and freshness that home cooking can bring, my initial marketing strategy was to target both the cookware and ‘foodie’ markets,” reveals Lyndsey.

“I exhibited the labels at a range of carefully selected regional food and drink festivals and it was demonstrated on stage alongside culinary experts such as James Martin and Anjum Anand.”

Lyndsey struck gold just three months after her idea went into production when kitchenware retailer Lakeland agreed to stock the labels.

“I sent them a speculative sample and they really liked it,” she explains. “Since then sales have continued to grow, and Lakeland has confirmed its placement for the foreseeable future.”

Another recent success for Lyndsey is a decision by homeware catalogue company Betterware to start selling her product later this year.

“As food safety is paramount to me as a mum, another strategy is to market COI to parents and mums-to-be as a time-saving, food safety product.”

The COI system recently received its first celebrity endorsement, too, in the shape of Amanda Holden, who said of the labels: “I’m beginning to wonder how I ever managed without them.”

As both food safety and wastage is clearly so close to Lyndsey’s heart, what does she think of recent government proposals to phase out ‘sell by’ and ‘best before’ dates?

“It is a step in the right direction but I believe it is equally important that consumers have a better understanding of what the labels on their food actually mean,” she says. “Too many households throw away perfectly good food because they are confused by food labelling. Simple advice on how best to store and use food in the home would help consumers manage their food in both a cost-effective and safety conscious manner.”

In the meantime, she is happy for her labelling system to lend a helping hand.

“The future for COI looks bright, with plans to expand the product lines to include the catering, food service and pharmaceutical industries, as well as private label producers,” she says. “I also truly believe that it will help both producers and consumers to reduce the millions of tons of waste that currently go into landfill in this country.”

'Sniff & Hoper' or 'Chucker-outter' have you considered this?

Are you a ‘sniff & hoper’ or ‘chucker-outter’? That’s the question Count On It ‘angels’ will be posing to shoppers in Peterborough city centre this weekend.

Count On It labels, the scratch-off, food label memory jogger which helps families manage their food more safely, whilst reducing unnecessary food waste – will be given away this weekend on a ‘fridge-friendly’ postcard that aims to raise awareness of the potential problems of eating food past it’s safe date and also throwing it away ‘just in case’.
As we are all too aware the price of food continues to rise, but many people do not realize that the amount of edible food that goes to waste and the number of cases of food poisoning also continue to rise at an alarming rate.

Sniff & Hoper?

Many people pride themselves on being a ‘sniff & hoper’, but most don’t realize that although foods may look, smell and even taste fine, they still harbor bacteria such as E.coli and salmonella that can cause food poisoning.
According to the Mayo Clinic Women’s HealthSource, incorrect storage and the use of food past it’s use by date causes about 325,000 people in the USA to be hospitalized every year because of food poisoning and 5,000 people die. It is a similar story in the UK, with the number of cases of listeria in people over 60 years of age doubling in the past nine years. 95% of cases end up needing hospital treatment and one in three of the people getting food poisoning caused by listeria die as a result. (FSA)

Consider these food safety reminders:-

 Make sure your fridge is cold enough - If you fridge isn’t cold enough food poisoning bacteria will still be able to grow. Your fridge should be between 0ºC and 5ºC.
 Refrigerate perishable food straight away – All foods that are perishable (i.e. goes off quickly) or has a label which says ‘keep refrigerated’ should be stored in the fridge and eaten within two days.
 Follow storage instructions – some jars and bottles must be kept in the fridge once opened and eaten within a certain time. Always check the label and keep a track on how long they have been opened – Count On It labels are just to job for this – just scratch off the date and you will have a permanent reminder as to how long they’ve been stored.
 Food should not be kept out of the fridge for more than four hours, so if you’ve prepared anything beforehand, keep it refrigerated until you’re ready to eat it.
 Leftovers – cool these as quickly as possible then store them in the fridge. Once stored, leftovers must be eaten within two days, except cooked rice which must be eaten within one day. Don’t forget to store them in a food container and label the date when first stored – again Count On It labels are perfect as they stick on any surface and can easily and cleanly be removed after use.

Chucker-outter?

According to WRAP’s Lovefoodhatewaste research, the main reasons people throw away food is because of either ‘cooking or preparing too much’, e.g. cooking too much pasta and it gets either left in the saucepan or on the plate’. Another reason is because food ‘is not used up in time’, good examples being fruit and vegetables go off in storage, or not eating food before it goes past its use-by date in the fridge. This can be because of a number of reasons, sometimes because of our increasingly busy lifestyles we change our plans, or we just forget what we’ve got in our cupboards, or we forget to fridge or freeze leftovers, which could be used later. Another common reason is that we just forget how long we’ve had food stored in our fridge and freezer, so rather than risk it we throw it away.
The problem with this is two-fold, not only are we needlessly wasting perfectly edible food, we are wasting our money too.

Consider these money saving tips to help you love your food more:-

 Regularly check what’s in your fridge and freezer – How often have you looked in your fridge to see an opened packet of ham or mayonnaise and you’ve no idea how long it’s been in there. Keep an eye on the use-by dates and also the storage instructions on jarred or bottled products. By tracking how long things have been opened or stored, you can be sure it is still safe to eat. To save you from having to remember all of the dates, Count On It labels will show you exactly the date of opening each product.

 Buy one, get one to freeze – rather than leave both items in your fridge and hope you’ll get round to using them. Split the pack, store one in the fridge and the other in a labelled food container – this way you will know exactly when you first froze it.

 Leftovers – Get storing all of your leftovers, be it leftover vegetables from Sunday lunch or the last portion of a midweek chilli con carne. Just pop them in a food container, label them and either fridge them for the next day or freeze them for a ‘ready meal’ at a later date. Not only do leftovers save you food waste and money, they save you time, what could be simpler and nicer than heating up a homecooked meal in minutes.

 Plan your meals – Rather than guessing your way around the supermarket, simply check your fridge, freezer and cupboards before you go and then write a list of what you actually need. Another good idea is to forward plan your week’s meals – it may sound like a long job, but at least during the week it will save you time as you will know for sure you have the food in and won’t need to make any extra trips out for ingredients or take-outs!
Not only do the labels help to reduce food waste - it is estimated that the average family throws away up to £610 worth of edible food each year - but customers are also finding them useful for labelling things such as medicines, contact lenses, cooker hood filters or anything where a reminder of an expiry date is needed.

Count On It labels currently are on sale online at www.count-on-it.co.uk, in Lakeland Ltd and a selection of cookshops, farmshops and deli’s across the region. The scratch-off labels are made of a sustainable material and come in boxes of 25 labels and retail at £1.99.

Mums- keep your family safe and save money too

Here's a sneak preview of our latest marketing activity. Count On It angels will soon be handing out the postcards above to mums in high streets up and down the country. The postcards, which will also include a free sample of a Count On It label, aim to remind mums that risking out of date food, or thowing it away 'just in case' is neither good for their family's health or for their pocket. Count On It labels take away the guesswork, ensuring you get to eat food at it's prime, keeping your family safe, saving you money and helping reduce unnecessary edible food waste.

If you know an event, venue or location where there are high concentrations of mums present, please let me know, I'd love to be able give out some freebies. You can drop me a line at lyndsey@count-on-it.co.uk

Until next time, Lyndsey