It is always a good idea to be clear and honest with your customers, and one way of doing so is to provide nutrition facts. You are never prohibited from including nutrition facts on your packaging, however there are certain foods and businesses that are exempt and others that MUST provide nutrition facts. For example, fresh fruit and vegetables don't require nutrition facts. Foods with nutrient content claims (e.g. "low-fat") must include nutrition facts. More broadly, the size of your business dictates whether or not you need nutrition facts on your packaging. Businesses that sell $50,000 or less worth of food or $500,000 or less worth of food and non-food combined are generally exempt. Businesses with fewer than 10 full-time employees and less than 10,000 units sold annually are also exempt. After crossing any of these thresholds, there is a leniency period of 18 months after which the business has to comply.

If you don't want to take advantage of our exclusive partnership with Avery, you have a few options to think about.

First, you can send your label design to a local or online print shop that will print your labels and send them to you. For smaller companies, that's probably the easiest option especially when you're still figuring out how to handle your labels, although may be more expensive for smaller runs.

You can also buy a label printer to print your own labels. We've partnered with a great company called QuickLabel Systems that sells high quality label printers specifically for food businesses. For smaller runs, you can save a lot of money and gain a ton of flexibility as you finalize your label design by printing in-house.

For a more inexpensive option, you can explore a thermal printer from Rollo. We've had many customers have a good experience printing their labels with a Rollo printer.

There are a few things that every food label is required to have, whether or not it has a nutrition fact panel. These are the statement of identity (or the name of the food) and net quantity statement (amount of the product in the package), which both have to be on the principal display panel (usually the front of the package, but can differ depending on the packaging type).

Other required statements include the name and address of the manufacturer, packer or distributor, the ingredient list, nutrition labeling (if necessary or desired) and any required allergy labeling (milk, egg, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, wheat, peanuts, soybeans). These last statements can be on the side or information panel.

Some nutrients are completely optional, and by default they are not included when making a label. However, if you make a claim about a particular nutrient, then it must be included in the nutritional facts, and thus it is no longer optional. In that case, these optional nutrients can be added with a click of your mouse. They can also be added simply if you want to include them on your label.

The optional nutrients are: calories from saturated fat, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat, potassium, other carbohydrates, and protein percentage. Additionally, there are a number of optional vitamins (too many to list) which are optional, unless they are added to your product as a supplement or, as always, if a claim is made about the vitamin.