L’éclair Patisserie | Success Story

L’éclair Patisserie, a leading bakery for premium cakes and desserts, has adopted a cutting-edge integrated labelling solution from Brother UK and Dill. The move helps the business meet pre-packed for direct sale (PPDS) regulations, improve efficiency and maintain its reputation for quality.

The challenge

Implement a solution that could automate nutritional labelling, highlight allergens and ensure compliance while keeping pace with growing demand from customers for its handmade French inspired patisserie products.

Implement an intuitive and reliable system to reduce errors and improve efficiency without disrupting the business’ workflow. Creating a more streamlined labelling system will help avoid the need for complex system changes and requiring minimal staff retraining with an intuitive, easy-to-use solution.

The solution

An automated smart food labelling solution from Dill in combination with Brother TD-4D professional label printers, to enable the business to produce precise labels on demand, reduce human error and improve traceability in their supply chain.

The results

Full compliance with Natasha’s Law and PPDS labelling regulations, with clear, accurate and consistently applied allergen and ingredient information across all products.

A saving of more than 416 hours annually – the equivalent to 17 full days – by eliminating manual labelling tasks and streamlining production workflows.

Savings on paper and ink costs, while also improving efficiency in transferring ingredient and nutritional information into the business’ procurement software.

Elevated brand presentation through professional, high-quality printed labels that enhance shelf appeal and reinforce brand consistency.

Enabling scalable growth, with a simplified and automated labelling process that easily adapts to increased demand and L’éclair’s future expansion plans.

“We use Dill to create fully compliant labels for all our products, with ingredients, allergens, calorie info, and due-by dates. Labels are created from our head office, then pushed to site, where our team prints them using Brother printers integrated into our workflow.

“With Dill and Brother, we’ve built a labelling system that works seamlessly – it’s compliant, scalable, and ready for wherever we go next.”

Kristy Walker, Administrator at L’éclair

Overview

As a specialist in premium baked goods for both retail and wholesale markets, the business is focused on innovation and compliance. It needed to upgrade its labelling technology to enhance accuracy, transparency and efficiency during the production process.

Meeting growing compliance and production demands

At the back end of 2021, the UK saw the introduction of Natasha’s Law, a new food regulation requiring businesses to provide full ingredient and allergen labelling on foods that are pre-packed for direct sale. At the time L’éclair Patisserie relied on manual labelling processes that were time-consuming, prone to error and difficult to scale.

With production demand increasing, alongside a desire to scale the brand and further build its reputation, L’éclair needed to improve how it handled nutritional and allergen labelling for its prepackaged products – seeking a solution that would ensure compliance without compromising on the speed or quality of its output.

At the heart of this solution was food labelling software. L’éclair Patisserie implemented Dill’s solution powered by Brother’s TD-4D professional desktop label printers to deliver a seamless, accurate and efficient labelling process.

Brother’s TD-4D devices also helped improve efficiencies with the fastest print speeds in class at up to 8ips, as well as label width detection, auto cut and USB, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth compatibility.

The system automates allergen and nutritional declarations in line with Natasha’s Law and integrates with the Erudus database – a market leading source of accurate allergy, nutritional and technical product data, populated by the food industry – for reliable ingredient data. High-quality label printing from Brother’s devices also ensures branding remains consistent across all product lines, whether for wholesale or retail customers.

Enhancing traceability and reducing manual work

The solution has enabled L’éclair to reduce labelling errors by 80% and speed up production by 500%, as well as improving ingredient traceability. It fits neatly into the bakery’s existing workflows, removing the need for complex system changes or large-scale staff retraining.

The results include:

Full compliance with Natasha’s Law and PPDS labelling requirements

Reduced time spent on manual label creation and checking by 80%

Lower ink and paper costs

Improved efficiency in transferring ingredient and nutritional information into procurement systems

Enhanced brand presentation with professionally printed labels

Scalability to support new product lines and growth plans

The Brother and Dill partnership delivered a future-proof solution that not only solves today’s compliance challenges but also sets L’éclair up for expansion. As the bakery explores new labelling features like QR codes for traceability and customer engagement, the system provides the flexibility and performance needed to scale.

Find out more about Brother's food labelling solutions.