businessinfomag.uk magazine 20 Automated food labelling Established in 2022 by a group of software developers, Dill started out creating a cashless catering system for Swansea Council that parents could use to order food and snacks for their children to pick up from designated points in their school canteen. Following the introduction of Natasha’s Law, which requires all pre-packed foods for direct sale to be labelled with a full list of ingredients, highlighting any allergens, Dill built a food labelling system for the Council that could also incorporate bar codes, QR codes, storage instructions, cooking instructions and other information. Such was the success of this system that Dill decided to pivot fully into food labelling and extend its capabilities to other retailers and hospitality venues with the launch of an integrated, automated, allin-one SaaS solution that, according to Coldea, removes a lot of time and complexity from labelling processes. “Firstly, we provide the complete package – software, label printers and consumables. We also track usage, including how many labels are printed each day, who prints them and where, giving full traceability of label production. And because the system is fully autonomous, users don’t need our help – they can simply print the labels they need and reorder supplies whenever required,” he says. To date, Dill has created five labelling solutions for specific needs: PPDS & Natasha’s Law Labelling, which ensures pre‑packed foods clearly display full ingredients lists with allergens highlighted; Nutritional PPDS Labelling, which adds calorie counts Just type in what you want Dill to do, for example ‘please add our logo to our food to go template’ or ‘please add a barcode at the bottom of the label’, and Dill will instantly make the requested changes, automatically sizing text boxes and formatting the label to maximise clarity. As Dill states in the promotional video, ‘It’s like talking to a designer, an operations manager and a labelling expert all at the same time’. The Swansea-based firm is already using the AI Labelling Studio internally to slash the time it takes to create customised label templates for clients, from around one hour with its existing design tool to just two or three minutes. It is now looking to offer this capability as an affordable module on its platform as well, enabling customers to create new labels or modify existing templates via a simple chat function. “We’re expecting a big uptake of our AI Labelling Studio, especially in the Food to Go retail sector,” explains Dill Co-founder Alex Coldea. “There, people want to design labels with different promotions, with barcodes, with logos – there are so many elements that need to be tweaked. The main value we see in AI is a reduction in the amount of time it will take to set up templates, but it will also allow us to reach end users in new industries. Our model is currently trained on food labelling, but we could easily tap into other industries like logistics, healthcare and manufacturing. Our wider vision is to let end users create their labelling infrastructure themselves to their precise requirements.” Importantly, for a business that prides itself on its lean operations, the AI Labelling Studio gives Dill’s five-strong team the ability to scale without a big increase in headcount. While businesses everywhere are exploring the possibilities of AI, the jury is still out on whether they will use its capabilities to replace jobs currently done by humans or to enable existing workers to be more productive, thus boosting growth. One company that sits squarely in the second group is Dill, developer of a next generation mobile food labelling platform that uses templates accessed via Android and iOS devices and wireless, driverless printing to automate and speed up labelling processes. At Restaurant & Takeaway Innovation Expo, which took place at ExCeL London on September 30-October 1, it invited visitors to try out the latest enhancement to its platform, an AI Labelling Studio that allows users to create, design and edit a label by describing what they need in colloquial English. Dill is making food labelling quicker and easier with the launch of a new AI-based label designer that will also enable it to scale faster and expand into new markets, reports James Goulding The magic ingredient AI Alex Coldea
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