VendScreen, Inc., recently announced its preparations for compliance with the Food and Drug Administration’s impending rule on Nutrition Labeling and Calorie Disclosure set to take effect as early as April of this year.
April has been set as the deadline for the FDA to finalization the rule on “Food Labeling: Nutrition Labeling of Standard Menu Items in Restaurants and Similar Retail Food Establishments.” Operators who have installed VendScreen devices will be best positioned for compliance once the final ruling is made, according to the company.
“Having a date set by the FDA for this ruling lets the vending industry, and operators in particular, know that the calorie disclosure rule is much closer to taking effect. The VendScreen Revolution was created to address many industry needs, nutritional information being just one. The Revolution retrofits to existing machines, and once installed, the operator is hands-off from a calorie disclosure standpoint.” All product nutritional detail information is entered by VendScreen, and downloaded wirelessly to the device.
Nutrition information for vended products resides in VendScreen’s cloud-based database and includes a wide-array of products, with new products being added as they come to market. The VendScreen Revolution communicates with the vending machine's existing system and updates wirelessly over the built-in 3G cellular connection.
“The beauty of our platform is it doesn’t require the operator to do anything extra to keep the device up-to-date. It was specifically designed to update content seamlessly and automatically” stated CTO Glenn Butler.
Ahead of the final ruling, the company has seen increased interest from operators inquiring about installing VendScreen Revolution devices on their machines. “Some of our first customers are deploying VendScreen on 100% of their machines. They are seeing the benefits of bringing their machines into the digital age, addressing the need for nutrition disclosure, but also adding cashless acceptance to all machines, a feature that industry data has shown can increase revenues by more than 20%. These operators are being positioned to take advantage of the other features VendScreen offers: data to improve routing efficiency, inventory control and merchandising as well as advertising and promotions capabilities” continued Butler.
