If you are a bakery professional that deals in bulk, chances are, you’re used to seeing massive numbers when measuring ingredients for your 2,000 + pastry yield. What you may not be accustomed to is having to simplify those numbers down in order to create a nutrition facts panel that reflects the individual serving size of your pastries. If you’re making 2,000, how can you discover the nutritional data of one single pastry? This is something that we encounter often with our clients who are dealing in bulk. So today we’re going to break down the simplification of your high-yielding recipes so you can create your nutrition facts panels with ease. Sounds good right? Maybe not as good as your pastry, but we promise, it’s totally worth it.
Understanding Single Serving Size
In order to begin breaking down those numbers, it’s important to know what the FDA is looking for in regards to the portion size and nutrition information to be reflected on your food label. This information be derived by understanding a RACC – Recommended Amount Customarily Consumed. What this means is that this serving size is the FDA’s recommendation for a single serving size of your particular food item. For doughnuts and coffee cakes, the RACC is 55 grams. When creating a beverage, the RACC is 120mL or 8 fl. oz. The RACC for a food item is different for nearly every food item. For this reason, we’ve build in a CFR tool to help you determine the appropriate serving size for your particular item.
The values that you need to go on a nutrition facts panel are those that reflect a single serving size based on the RACC’s published by the FDA. So if you have a case of 100 pastries, you need to create a nutrition label for a single pastry, not the entire case. Looking up your particular product and single serving size with the CFR tool will look something like this.
No matter how large your recipe, your nutrition facts panel should reflect a single serving based on the FDA RACC recommendations.
Continuing with the example above, the value that you are trying to determine the nutrition facts for is 55g. Your gram weight for your entire recipe could be 115,892g (or 255.5lbs). However, you are are still looking for the single serving size for your nutrition panel. We know, we’ve been repetitive, but it’s so important we have to be!
Servings Per Container
When breaking down a bulk recipe, the phrase “Servings Per Container” could be confusing as well. You’re dealing with A LOT of containers! Is the container a case? A pallet? When working with bulk, you don’t immediately consider the individual containers that the product is sold in. But a nutrition facts panel requires this particular information. Here’s a few examples:
If you are selling a case of individually-wrapped pastries to a retail store to be sold individually, then the servings per container in this case would be ONE
If your bakery sells a case of 20 boxes of pastries, and each box of pastries contains 6 pastries, the servings per container equals 6.
The servings per container refer to the container that the item is SOLD IN.
So if you have 6, 55g pastries in a box, the servings per container would be 6.
Here’s a trick question: What if your individual pastries do not weigh 55g exactly?
Then your servings per container will increase. If each of your pastries weighs 65 grams instead of 55g, then you just have a quick math problem:
Multiply your ACTUAL pastry weight by your servings per container. In this case: 65g x 6 = 390g
Then simply divide by the actual RACC recommendation: 390g/55g = 7.09
Therefore, each container holds about 7 servings.
When it comes to breaking down large numbers, it can get a little tricky. You need to understand the values for your nutritional panel. These are your single serving size RACC per the FDA, and your servings per container that your food product will be SOLD IN.
But, what if I don’t deal with the individual packaging or retail packaging at all?
If you are a baker who is not dealing with packaging at all, then the number that your retailers need to know is the individual serving size for one product. And how many servings come in that individual product.
For example: If you make JUMBO muffins that weigh 110 grams, you understand that 110g is well above the 55g RACC portion set for bakery items. In this case, your jumbo muffin becomes a container of its own in a sense. Then your panel will be requiring that you are giving the servings per product. Confusing? Stay with me.
Because your jumbo-size muffin contains a much higher value, you have to report the number of servings in the individual product. Pretend as if each jumbo muffin as part of our “individually wrapped” example, because they are being sold as a single unit.
Simply divide your jumbo muffin weight by the RACC value that we’ve identified in the CFR tool. So in this case: 110g/55g = 2 servings. So each jumbo muffin would contain 2 servings.
Want some extra credit?
Keeping with our JUMBO muffin example, if you have 6 jumbo muffins packaged in a box that will be sold to the consumer, how many servings per container are in your JUMBO muffin box?
Did you guess 12? If you did, you’re getting the hang of it! There are 12 servings in the box that is being SOLD to the consumer. Why? Because there are 2 servings per muffin and 6 muffins per box making the servings per box, 12!
We hope that if you’re dealing in bulk, we’ve made this process just a tad bit easier. Remember, your nutrition facts panel is based around the individual product’s nutrition. Safest route to go is to determine the individual product’s nutrition information.
