Printing Your First Label

This guide takes you from a loaded roll to a printed label, and explains what ends up on the paper.

Before You Start

• The device is paired with your branch
• At least one product exists in your catalogue, with its allergens set
• A label roll is loaded

Open Settings on the device and look at the Printer row. It reads Printer Ready when the printer is good to go, or tells you what is wrong: Paper out, Cover open, or Disconnected. Start here whenever a print does not come out, because it usually answers the question on its own.

Step 1: Load the Roll

1. Open the paper bay on the device
2. Drop the roll in so the labels feed out towards the front, printed side up
3. Pull a little paper out through the slot and close the cover until it clicks
4. In Settings, check the Printer row now reads Printer Ready
5. If the paper has stopped mid-label, tap the feed icon on the Printer row to advance to the start of the next one

If your paper bay has the 5 mm guide strip fitted, turn Paper Guide on under Settings → Label Settings. If the strip is not fitted, leave it off. This tells the device how the roll sits in the bay, so the print lands in the middle of the label rather than drifting towards one edge.

Step 2: Find the Product

Open the Label tab. There are three ways to get to a product:

• Search: type part of the name in the search bar at the top
• Browse: tap a category chip, or switch to the grid view for larger category cards
• Scan: tap the scan icon in the top right and scan the product barcode

Recently Printed is the first chip in the list, and on a busy service it is usually the fastest route back to what you printed five minutes ago.

The scan screen has a Scan-to-Print switch that decides what a scan does. Left off, scanning shows a confirmation card first, which is what you want while you are learning. Turned on, a scan prints straight away.

Step 3: Check and Print

Tapping a product opens the Print Label screen. It shows a Preview of the actual label, rendered by the same code that drives the printer, so what you see is what the roll will carry.

In Print details you can:

• read the product’s shelf life, and the use-by date and time it works out to
• tap Change to set a different date or time
• mark the item Frozen
• choose the storage location that prints on the label, for prep products
• set the quantity, from 1 to 99

Then tap Print Label, or Print N Labels when you have asked for more than one.

If something on the product will not fit the label, the preview flags it and a note beside it says which section was dropped. That is worth reading rather than dismissing: on a sales label, a missing section can be a legally required one.

What Ends Up on the Label

LabelFood prints two different kinds of label, and which one you get depends on the product:

• Prep labels are for food prepared and stored in your kitchen. They carry the product name, the allergen summary, the USE BY date, the storage location, the defrost guide, flags such as DE-FROSTED and USE FIRST, and a print stamp showing when it was printed, by whom, and which copy it is, for example 1/4.
• Sales labels are for food you sell to a customer, which is what Natasha’s Law covers. The default design is the full UK compliant layout: name of the food, use-by, ingredients with allergens emphasised, a CONTAINS summary, nutrition, storage, country of origin, net quantity, lot number, price with barcode, and your business name and address.

Allergens are always emphasised, so they stand out from the rest of the text as the law requires.

Choosing a Different Design

Go to Settings → Label Settings → Select Template. Prep and sales designs are on separate tabs, each one previewed with sample data, and the one in use is badged. Tap Use this design to switch.

The Prep tab holds the kitchen layouts. They differ in what sits beside the use-by: a QR code, your branch logo, or the operator’s initials for an inspection, and one prints the use-by panel dark so it carries across a busy fridge.

The Sales tab holds the customer-facing layouts, from a short price-and-allergen label up to the full UK compliant declaration, plus a Custom design where you pick the sections yourself.

Comparing the previews on screen tells you more than any description, so switch between the tabs and look. The design decides the paper size as well, so there is no separate size setting to keep in step. New devices start on prep Standard and sales Compliant (UK).

Two more switches live on the same Label Settings screen and apply to every design: Best Before makes labels read BEST BEFORE instead of USE BY, and Extra Bold darkens the print for a tired print head or an unresponsive roll.

Troubleshooting

Nothing prints. Check the Printer row in Settings. Paper out or Cover open is the usual answer.

The print is faint. Turn on Extra Bold under Settings → Label Settings. If every roll comes out faint, the print head is the likely cause.

The print sits too close to one edge. Check Paper Guide matches your paper bay: on with the 5 mm strip fitted, off without it.

The print starts mid-label. Tap the feed icon on the Printer row in Settings to advance to the next label.

Allergens are missing. Set them on the product in the dashboard, then sync. A product with no allergens recorded prints a dash, not a blank.

The use-by date looks wrong. Check the product’s Expiry after value in the dashboard. On the device you can override the date for a single print with Change.

A section is missing from a sales label. Read the notice beside the preview. Either the product is missing that data, or there is not enough room on the stock for it.

The scanner will not read a barcode. Clean the lens, and check the barcode is not creased or printed too small.