As retailers expand prepared foods, grab-and-go meals, and ready-to-eat offerings, they face growing pressure. They must manage labor, maintain product quality, improve accuracy, and reduce waste. According to FMI, The Food Industry Association, fresh departments accounted for 41% of food retail sales in 2025, and 77% of retailers plan to expand fresh grab-and-go offerings over the next two years, underscoring the continued importance of foodservice to retail growth.
One often-overlooked part of these operations is the label. Labels help identify products and communicate ingredient and allergen information. This supports freshness management and enables efficient checkout, keeping workflows moving from preparation to purchase. Linerless labeling takes these benefits a step further by helping retailers improve operational efficiency while reducing material waste.
Why Foodservice Growth Demands Better Labeling
Convenience stores are expanding made-to-order and prepackaged foodservice, while grocery retailers continue to invest in deli, bakery, produce, and ready-to-eat meals. These offerings create opportunities, but they also introduce more products, packaging formats, and information requirements.
Additionally, all operations must accommodate:
- Ingredient and allergen information
- Preparation dates, use-by dates, and freshness information
- Product identification and traceability details
- Pricing and weight information for variable-weight products
- Order customizations and promotional messaging
When labeling processes cannot keep pace, delays, relabeling, product waste, and labor inefficiencies can affect both margins and the customer experience. Linerless labeling can help address these demands by supporting efficient labeling workflows and accommodating the information required across a variety of foodservice applications.
Faster Service Starts with Better Labeling
In prepared food operations, labeling connects preparation to customer handoff. Sandwiches, beverages, salads, bakery items, and grab-and-go meals need clear, accurate labels to keep orders organized and moving efficiently.
When matched to the application, linerless labeling can help operators:
- Maintain efficient preparation and packaging workflows
- Improve order identification and accuracy
- Reduce interruptions with more labels per roll and fewer roll changes
- Support consistent product identification and date management
- For high-volume operations, fewer media changes let employees spend less time replacing supplies and more time preparing orders and serving customers. These improvements may seem small at an individual workstation, but their value becomes more significant when considered across multiple shifts, departments, and store locations.
Support Fresh Food Quality and Food Safety
Foodservice products require different label information depending on how they are prepared, packaged, sold, and stored. Prepared meals may need ingredient and allergen details to help customers make informed choices. Deli and bakery items often require pricing, product names, and freshness dates. Grab-and-go foods may need these details in a compact space. Therefore, legibility is important for fast identification.
Linerless labeling supports these requirements with more flexible label content to accommodate requirements across applications. When paired with OEM linerless label printers, they allow retailers to update information as needed and present essential details clearly with the transparency customers expect.
Material selection is equally important. Labels must be matched to the packaging surface, handling conditions, storage environment, and expected product life to maintain readability and adhesion throughout their intended use.
By considering both the information printed and the conditions in which a label will be used, retailers can develop more reliable labeling processes that support freshness management, accurate product identification, and informed purchasing decisions.
Enable Better Self-Checkout and Frictionless Shopping
Self-checkout, scan-and-go, micro-markets, and unattended formats place greater responsibility on labels to communicate product identity and pricing accurately.
In traditional checkout settings, cashiers can quickly resolve misreads or scanning issues. In self-service and unattended environments, unreadable or inaccurate labels can delay transactions, require employee intervention, or lead customers to abandon their purchases.
For these applications, label performance is even more critical. Clear printing, reliable adhesion, and compatibility with scanning systems help support:
- First-scan success
- Accurate product identification and pricing
- Faster transactions
- Fewer checkout interruptions
Successful performance depends on more than the printed barcode alone. Print quality, label material, adhesive selection, barcode placement, and compatibility with scanning equipment all contribute to a dependable self-service experience.
For retailers evaluating linerless labeling, testing these factors within the intended application is an important step toward ensuring the solution meets both operational and customer expectations.
Reduce Waste and Support Sustainability Goals
Sustainability is playing an increasingly important role in how grocery and convenience store operators make purchasing decisions for operations. Linerless labeling supports these efforts by eliminating the label liner that reduces excess waste and disposal costs across foodservice applications.
Beyond waste reduction, linerless labeling can contribute to operational efficiency by optimizing label storage, inventory management, and material handling. These benefits are especially relevant in busy foodservice environments where consistent supply, efficient workflows, and responsible resource use are essential.
For retailers operating across numerous locations, these improvements can have a meaningful cumulative impact on material handling and waste management. By evaluating current labeling processes and sustainability priorities, retailers can identify where linerless labeling can deliver practical operational benefits and advance environmental goals.
Turning Labels into a Strategic Advantage
For grocery and convenience store operators, labels affect more than packaging. When labeling is considered part of the broader operational strategy, it becomes more than a simple consumable expense. Every label applied in a deli, bakery, prepared foods department, or grab-and-go program influences operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, product quality, and the customer experience.
Labels affect labor productivity by reducing manual processes and supporting more efficient workflows and influence throughput by moving products quicker from preparation to checkout.
Beyond operations, labels serve as an extension of the retailer’s brand that shapes the customer experience. Every package on the shelf represents an opportunity to help shoppers quickly identify products, understand ingredients and allergens, verify freshness, and make confident purchasing decisions. Consistent, easy-to-read labeling can strengthen trust and elevate the presentation of product offerings, while poor labeling can undermine even the highest-quality products.
The growth of retail foodservice continues to create opportunities for differentiation and customer loyalty. FMI – The Food Industry Association. “The Power of Foodservice at Retail 2026” findings summarized by The Shelby Report, indicates that retailers continue investing in prepared foods, grab-and-go offerings, and fresh departments to strengthen shopper engagement and drive repeat visits.
When viewed through this broader operational and customer-eccentric lens, labeling is no longer simply a consumable expense. It becomes a strategic asset that helps retailers improve productivity, protect margins, enhance brand value, advance sustainability goals, and ultimately drive greater profitability across operations.
The Bottom Line
Grocery and convenience store operators face growing pressures to improve efficiency, and keep pace with evolving customer expectations. As foodservice programs evolve, labeling plays an increasingly important role in keeping products organized, communicating essential product information, and supporting consistent processes from prep through point-of-purchase.
At Iconex, we help retailers evaluate their labeling processes and identify opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and support their operational and sustainability goals. Linerless labeling solutions turn everyday labeling into measurable operational value by helping improve throughput, minimize disruptions, and deliver a more consistent customer experience. These benefits extend across foodservice operations, helping retailers manage resources more effectively, protect margins, and support profitable growth.
Explore Iconex linerless labeling solutions and download our retail white paper to learn how the right labeling approach can deliver value beyond the label itself.