Tagging fish for freshness

Store Equipment & Design, March, 2000 by Monica Buckley

Improved time-and-temperature integrator tags help Brown & Cole move fish to self-serve

"The perception is that fish on ice is the freshest possible, and as an industry we encourage people to think that," said Sue Cole, public affairs manager at 36-store Brown & Cole, Bellingham, Wash. The problem, Cole added, is that while ice keeps fish sufficiently cold on the bottom, the exposed portion readily begins to break down.

Last summer, the company removed the fish-on-ice display case from its Mount Vernon Thrifty Food Pavilion store and began testing a program using Vitsab time-and-temperature integrators (TTIs), which are applied to fish as they are wrapped. It is the first use of the tags on a supermarket sales floor; Brown & Cole backs up the program by training staff to answer questions, putting up signage to explain it and distributing handouts detailing both the program and the company's 200-percent guarantee--an offer of both money back and a replacement fish.

The tags, developed by Belmont, N.C.-based Cox Technologies from Swedish technology, track exposure through an enzyme reaction that is started by squeezing the tag just before it is applied to the package. For the tags to truly track degradation, products such as fish must have been properly handled in distribution and at store level prior to packaging.

The tags can be "tuned" to different products by altering the enzyme solution strength and type of substrate so the pH change that causes the tag to change color as breakdown occurs matches that of the product as it reacts to time and temperature exposure, said Ron Needham, national sales manager at Cox Technologies. The company spent a year and more than $20 million improving the product since licensing it about two years ago. Vitsab may have broader application than polymeric TTIs produced by Life Lines and 3M, which are currently used primarily in distribution and cannot be tuned. Polymeric tags must be kept frozen before use, and are essentially "running" from the time they are manufactured, Needham said, so they lose shelf life even when kept at ideal temperatures.

So far, Brown & Cole reports excellent customer acceptance of the program, and no one has taken the retailer up on the guarantee. According to Cole, the tags cost as much as the packaging, but the program is still less expensive than selling fish on ice from a full-service merchandiser, because the open refrigerated case now used is self-serve. The case takes up less space, she noted, which has allowed expansion of the adjacent meat department. The manufacturer of the tags, meanwhile, has begun making them smaller since the start of the program, so they cover less of the product.

Cole said the company has no immediate plans to extend the tagging to products other than fish and shellfish. The tags, however, may start appearing elsewhere and on various products. Because they are presumed to more accurately reflect product deterioration than a "use by" date, they may provide potential savings in the form of longer shelf life--a major consideration, since, according to FMI estimates, losses from discarded perishables represent between 2 and 3 percent of gross revenues. According to Needham, a large Midwestern chain may soon sign on to a program similar to the one at Brown & Cole.