When federal regulators recently declared the broadly used food additive Red Dye No. 3 as Public Health Enemy No. 1, Michael “Doc” Dagerath was prepared for his phone and inbox to light up with questions from anxious retailers, brands and suppliers.
Among the questions: “Do we need to pull the product from shelves?” “What do I use instead of Red Dye No. 3?”
Perhaps the biggest question: “Do we even know which products in our stores contain Red Dye No. 3?”
For many retailers, the immediate answer was, “No. I don’t know which products contain Red Dye No. 3.”
“It’s surprising how many retailers don’t have their product information digitized,” said Dagerath, vice president of quality assurance at Daymon, which powers private brands for Advantage Solutions.
Product digitization, part of Advantage’s quality assurance offering, means that every item in the store is scanned and recorded. Access to these digital records is key for retailers, allowing for items with particular attributes to be easily located and removed from shelves as needed, he said.
“Any branded products, whether they be store brands, national or regional brands, should have their product information digitized so they can quickly query and understand the answer to any question that they need answered,” said Dagerath.
Such was the case when the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in January moved to ban Red Dye No. 3, a food additive found in thousands of products. With mandatory compliance required within two years, the FDA’s decision set off a scramble among product manufacturers to reformulate — and among retailers to develop plans to reformulate or pull affected products off shelves.
Without access to digital product records, the manual process of surveying thousands of SKUs could take months instead of minutes, and costs significantly more in terms of labor, he said. “You’d need a small army of people to do that for 3,000+ SKUs.”
It’s not just about Red Dye No. 3. Advantage’s quality assurance services help brands comply with new and evolving regulations from federal agencies like looming tariffs and its potential business impact to profits. It pays to be nimble — those that respond quickly can gain a competitive edge and also save money in the process.
Product digitization is also important for identifying products with artificial colors or flavors, allergens, and claims that need to be included on labels, as well as new food traceability standards, Dagerath said.
For retailers, he said, “The question is not if you’re going to digitize your product information, it’s when you’re going to do this.”
Hear from Michael “Doc” Dagerath and leaders from Advantage Solutions at Expo West on March 5 during the panel discussion, “Emergent to Insurgent: Crack the Code to Propel Breakthrough Brand Growth.”
