Rosati Ice – On Demand Color Labeling

Rosati Ice, (Clifton Heights, Delaware County (Delco), PA) has been in business for over 100 years and are proud to be the original Italian Ice company in the United States.  Founded in 1912 by Sam Rosati in Philadelphia, the company eventually became the leader in the Tri-State Area market, selling Italian Ice in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Today Rosati can be found across the country “in scoop shops, food markets, schools, festivals and anywhere the happy sounds of a ding-a-ling truck can be heard”.

The Branding Issue

For food manufacturers like Rosati, branding is critical!  Traditionally, many companies have managed branding with the purchase of high quality pre-printed pressure-sensitive labels.  This method, while extremely effective in low mix, high volume applications, is not efficient with regards to high mix, low volume branding scenarios. The ability to efficiently manage many product/flavor variations and quickly introduce new product/flavors is more critical than ever to the success of the business and paramount to responding to consumer trends. Product Variations using pressure sensitive labels have commonly been handled in 2 ways:

• TRADITIONAL:  Pre-printed Labels from Flexographic Printing Presses
  • • Purchase Large Quantities of Preprinted Labels
    • Send Pre-printed Labels through secondary (black image) thermal printing equipment at the packaging/manufacturing location to print lot codes, manufacture dates, nutritional information and other sku specific information.
  • Issues:  Need to Stock large quantities of many different preprinted labels, resulting in inefficient overproduction, inevitable obsolescence/waste, and a multi-step process that still requires printing at the operational level.

• MODERN APPROACH:  Print High-Quality Labels On Demand- IN HOUSE
  • • Select the correct High Quality, Industrial Desktop COLOR Label Printer
    • Use Blank Inkjet Labels that fit product packaging and meet use case for application, adhesion, and durability.Print High Quality Color Labels On Demand!
    • Benefits:  Flexibility and Control to easily respond to branding needs.  Print exactly the number of labels you need.  No requirement to manage and store huge preprinted label inventories.

At Rosati, they were managing branding for their 2.5 Gallon containers in the “traditional” way, by using preprinted labels which are manually placed on the top/lid of the container.  The continuous need to introduce new flavors and products every year, coupled with the requirement to print expiration dates on the label at the time of production, dictated the need for more control and flexibility and mostly a “modern” way to print high quality labels on demand!

Solution- In-House On Demand Color Label Printing

1. Select Most Suitable Color Printer 

Rosati’s artwork was for 5” circles, characterized by rich, bold, full color graphics.  Due to the size (5” wide) and need for rich, bold coloring, we recomended an Afinia L801 Color Label Printer that uses Memjet Inkjet printing technology and dye based inks to print up to 8.5” wide with a print resolution of up to 1600 dpi at a print speed of 6 inches per second (6ips).

2. Identify Blank Label Size/Material 

IPSi worked with Rosati to identify key requirements for the use case and life of the label so that we could engineer and supply the correct blank label configuration and material.  The use case for Rosati involved hand label application of printed labels on plastic lids.   The printed label and adhesive needed to withstand freezing temperatures and varying levels of moisture exposure throughout the life of the container.  Additionally, we had to take into consideration the fact that label printing needed to be simple and easy.  Based on these criteria, we engineered a double die cut label that allows them to print past the inner circle die cut to achieve full bleed printing without the need to fine tune the printer.  This design eliminated misprints, wasted time, and  ink offset on the liner.

3. Print High Quality Labels- On Demand YOURSELF! 

IPSi worked with Rosati’s graphic design agency, Macadoodle, to optimize the size of the high resolution .pdfs so that printing directly from the .pdf using the Afinia L801 windows printer driver would be seamless and very easy for the user.   Rosati used an inexpensive PDFelement Pro to add an expiration date prior to printing.  The result, as seen in this video, is another extremely satisfied customer who now has control, flexibility and a very efficient label printing process to produce HIGH QUALITY COLOR LABELS ON DEMAND!