Continental Kosher Butchers are Australia’s largest Kosher meat supplier, providing meats, small goods, antipasto, specialty delicatessen items, dried spices and pantry staples to larger supermarkets, smaller retailers, the food-service industry and now exporting to customers in Asia-Pacific.

“The strength of the current set up is flexibility and adaptability of printing in-house. No delay time means no hindrance on creativity or speed to market; enabling a small business to do what small businesses do best.” - Daniel Lewis, General Manager, Continental Kosher Butchers

The Challenge

Continental Kosher Butchers have a rapidly growing product range, which due to its nature has unique labelling requirements, including ingredients lists, nutritional values, and varying weights. With traditional labels and packaging, Continental Kosher Butchers would be faced with having to hold label stock for each individual product. Finding space to store the all the different label stocks would be difficult, not to mention the risk of getting stuck with expensive, unusable labels if packaging or labelling regulations were to change.

The Solution

Continental Kosher Butchers use a pre-printed template label and overprint the variable information for each product type, in-house, as each batch is produced. The labelling solution includes:

• Datamax-O'Neil thermal printers
• BarTender labelling software
• Thermal (overprint) transfer labels featuring their branding
• Thermal transfer ribbon

The overprint labels are printed for both Continental Kosher Butchers' range of meats and small goods, as well as their new brand Lewis & Son which produces small goods, fermented vegetables, deli lines and dry goods. An industrial thermal printer is then used to overprint the variable information (product name, ingredients, and nutritional panel) into the remaining space provided.

The Outcome

The labelling solution allows for brand consistency, improved efficiency, and cost-savings. Cash is not tied up in holding stock of hundreds of different labels, as Continental Kosher Butchers keep only the template labels which are used across their product ranges. In-house printing of variable information provides flexibility. Product information can simply be changed as needed and it is easy to delete a product line. This also means there is no label waste; should a product or labelling regulations change, it is just a matter of updating the software label template.

“Using an attractive base label printed by insignia, with templates set up on BarTender software by insignia technicians means we’ve simplified our label inventory with no sacrifice to the visual appeal of the label.”

Flexibility and Agility

Continental Kosher Butchers recognize the role this flexibility and agility has had in helping them remain responsive to their customers and the market in general. Being able to quickly make changes and respond to new product requests has helped facilitate their business growth. When the meat industry felt the impact of the drought and the high dollar, Continental Kosher Butchers expanded into new markets with new products, introducing their Lewis and Son range.

Recently Lewis & Son has become the first FODMAP Friendly certified small goods crafters and has also obtained endorsement from Coeliac Australia with their Gluten Free products. These lines have seen excellent growth in line with customers needs.

With their in-house QA department and the ability to put together new product samples easily with their labelling solution, Continental Kosher have the ability to launch a new product line within days, not weeks or months.

The in-house, overprint label solution allows Continental Kosher Butcher to focus on what they do best – their extensive range of Kosher meats, small goods and health foods - rather than wasting time on packaging and labelling inventory management.