SpecPage: The Future of Food: Transparency and Traceability Are Key

It’s a no-brainer that the hospitality industry—specifically the foodservice industry—has been heavily impacted by the containment COVID-19 measures imposed by governments. However, many restaurateurs have been quick to adapt their business model to offer their customers more flexible, pandemic-friendly dining options. This has caused a surge in take-away and delivery service options, not only from quick-service or fast-casual restaurants but also from higher-end restaurants. There are fewer labeling requirements for food sold from takeaway and restaurants than for pre-packed food—but every piece of information should be accurate and not misleading.

While FDA has eased labeling rules to help U.S.-based restaurants shift to take-out model, many of them are still not ready to support consumer expectations pertaining to the clarity and accuracy of food-related information. This is where SpecPage can do wonders. With its SpecPDM—a premier process solution—the company enables transparency and traceability, from farm to fork.

SpecPDM provides traceability via oversight and insight into the process history, from research and development, trials, simulations, food manufacturing, supply chain, labeling, quality control, and management, to global regulatory compliance processes—delivering an end-to-end, comprehensive mapping process solution.

“Food manufacturers can increase production efficiency by learning how to use data as a strategic asset and provide seamless, connective,

end-to-end solutions across their entire product development system,” mentions Severin Weiss, the CEO and Co-founder of SpecPage. This innovative product lifecycle management (PLM) platform supports rapid response, speed-to-market, and optimizes product development along the supply chain. Further, it also monitors quality controls, regulatory compliance, and specific recipe data such as halal, kosher, allergens, and nutritional information. As a result. “SpecPage is the global leader in state-of-the-art, enhanced digital process solutions for formula-based food and beverage. It ensures that the modern recipe-based manufacturing becomes manageable and legally compliant,” says Weiss.

What differentiates SpecPage is that the company delivers innovative software solutions in the cloud and focuses on helping clients achieve and sustain growth with seamless, connected, data-driven results. In an instance, SpecPage helped a global leading food product manufacturer review its requirements for product specification management and governance to enable and enhance overall supply chain traceability. The client needed to ensure the required levels of certifications across its supply networks and extend the scope for electronic specification management spanning suppliers to manufacturers. They wanted to establish capabilities for managing electronic signed-off specification guarantees with existing product development management initiatives across an SKU range of around 4,000 raw materials and 3,000 finished goods. As with this manufacturer, ingredients (raw materials) were often sourced from different suppliers with similar—but not identical—specifications. Products sourced globally can be subject to varying protocols for certification and standards for specifications. SpecPage solutions deployed as part of this initiative were SpecPDM (recipe and specification management), Supplier’s Guide (Supplier Collaboration Portal), and SAP GTIN-Connector (for GS1-GDSN publication).

With such a competent traceability solution, SpecPage has truly carved a unique niche for itself with customers across all continents. “We’re the European market leader for food and beverage PLM formula and compliance management solutions and in the U.S., we only have couple dozen customers. Currently we are evaluating how to accelerate the U.S. market penetration together with a strategic partner,” concludes Weiss.