Food safety
🏷️ Prep & use-by labels: dating food you make
In-house food needs a prep date and a use-by. How labels keep stock rotating and defensible.
This is general guidance. Food-safety rules can change — always verify the current requirements with your national food-safety authority ↗. The operator remains responsible for compliance; we accept no liability for this information.
When you prep or open something in-house, it needs a date and a use-by so it gets used in time and rotated properly (first in, first out). It also protects you: a dated label shows an inspector your stock control is real.
What a good label carries
- The dish or product name
- Prep date (or defrost date) — set by the operator
- Use-by date, derived from the item’s shelf life
- Who made it
- The allergen line, so it travels with the food
Defrosting resets the clock: once thawed, an item usually has a shorter window than its frozen shelf life. Handle that as a separate "days once thawed" value from the defrost date.
The Labels view generates a printable sticker sheet — pick a dish, the prep date defaults to today, the shelf life prefills from the dish, and the allergen line comes along automatically. There’s a Prepared / Defrosted mode for exactly the thawing case above.
General stock-control good practice; your risk analysis sets shelf lives.