Love’s Oven was born in 2009 with a promise to its patients to provide
great tasting cleanly extracted products to help with their chronic pain and
other ailments. If you look at the label of any of their 15+ products
you’ll never find any ingredients that you need to have a chemical engineering
degree to pronounce. Ingredients like crystallized ginger and honey roasted
peanut butter are about as complicated as it gets. Love’s Oven has built
its reputation by crafting their products in a state of the art facility in
Denver where their food safety and quality assurance programs guarantee you’ll
receive a potent and delicious product that can be found throughout Colorado.
In
the fall of 2016, Colorado issued new label requirements that caused Love’s
Oven to change their labeling procedures. According to Katie Wrank,
Administrative Assistant & Marketing, “Colorado mandated that we add the
Universal THC Symbol, in various sizes and colors, to each label for both
medical and recreation use. At the time,
we were using a black only, DataMax thermal transfer printer adding variable
data on top of five different preprinted labels in conjunction to printing some
on a laser printer. This process was very frustrating and time consuming. We had to make a change.”
Katie
says, “While growing significantly, we needed an efficient and improved process
to label our products. Prior to any changes, our work flow was to extract label
information from the daily production list, transfer the production numbers and
product information manually to the packaging order, and then type everything
by hand onto our label templates. With over eighty-eight label templates
requiring daily changes, our label process was at risk for human error. Plus,
all these changes were too much for one person to manage.”
To
change their label process, Love’s Oven contacted Rich Arbogast of Sendata
Systems, (www.sendatasystems.com). As
a partner of Color Label Solutions, Rich contacted us to see if we have a
solution for Love’s Oven. Rich said, “Sendata
are experts at managing data and thermal transfer printers. But decided to work with Color Label
Solutions to bring the best possible print on-demand color label system for our
customer, Love’s Oven.
To
start the process, we printed sample labels on the C7500G. We recommended this printer given their need
for a large volume of gloss labels.
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| Love's Oven C7500G Full-Bleed Label |
In addition, we provided an estimated ink cost of their labels.
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| C7500G Estimated Ink Yield |
On these long, full-bleed labels, I estimated the ink cost at $0.027
per label. Based on the samples and
estimated ink costs, Love’s Oven purchased a C7500G printer.
About the C7500G, Katie says, “We now have the ability to print on
demand labels quickly and efficiently. We also have the design flexibility to
change our graphics on a moment’s notice.
Many of our customers love to see their logo printed in full color on
products that contain their trim or flower.”
While working with Love’s Oven, I learned about their new
label creation process. Katie says, “to
improve our labeling process, I decided to use a mail merge technic that I used
in a former position at a large shipping and printing company. In Excel, I
created a database of our products, including all the variable information:
product name, ingredients, allergens, net weight, and pieces per package. This
database allows us to quickly update product information such as changes to a
recipe. On another tab in the Excel database, we retain information about the
ingredients used during the cultivation of the marijuana, which are required by
the state of Colorado. By using the VLOOKUP command in Excel, we pull
information pertaining to each product, automating the data input on the
production list.”
“Once we have the products compiled in one list, we use
Adobe InDesign to merge the data with our artwork onto the backgrounds of our
label templates. With this workflow, we can export all our labels from one file
as separate PDF files which print like a dream on the C7500G.”
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| C7500G Label |
One other interesting note, Rich has worked to help Love’s Oven to
print THC symbols on their brownies using white, food-grade ink. What a great solution Rich put together for
Love’s Oven.
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| Edible Ink Printed Brownies |
“With the constantly changing Cannabis labeling/direct marketing laws and regulations required by the
State of Colorado, providing the best solution to these requirements was our goal. I
believe we hit the mark with the C7500G printer for the packaging
labels and direct marking food grade inkjet coder for applying the mark
directly to the edible products. These products are the only ones I know that can print with the quality needed for the labels, and the food grade ink
for the direct marking of the edible food cannabis products.”
We’re excited by the success at Love’s Oven. If you need a new labeling solution for your
cannabis or any other products, contact Color Label Solutions. We’ll help you meet the regulatory
requirements of your industry; and produce beautiful labels in the process.
Guy Mikel
855-962-7670
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