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Legal to the millimetre. Still sells the salad.

Ely’s Fine Foods makes sixteen fresh salads for Canadian grocery cases. BEND Creative redesigned the whole label system so every tub carries what Canadian law requires, in English and French, and still looks good enough to pick up.

Client
Ely’s Fine Foods
Category
Fresh deli salads
Scope
Packaging system, Canadian legal compliance

The salads weren’t the problem. The labels were.

Every Ely’s flavour wore the same green wrap. From a few steps back, coleslaw and chickpea salad looked like the same product.

Then Health Canada’s front-of-pack nutrition symbol became mandatory on January 1, 2026. Every salad high in sodium, sugars or saturated fat needed it at its legal minimum size, beside a common name, claims and net quantity in both official languages. The label had to make room for the law and still give each flavour its own face.

  • Find itTell sixteen flavours apart at arm’s length.
  • Pass itMeet every Canadian labelling rule, in both languages.
Ely's salads on a cooler shelf in the previous packaging: identical white and green wraparound labels with a parsley illustration on every flavour
Before: one green-and-white label for every flavour, name in the bottom strip.

Sixteen flavours, one system.

Every label uses the same layout: the Ely’s script at the top, the name in English, the French at the same size, then the claim and the weight.

What changes is colour. Each flavour gets a dark ground and an accent pulled from the salad itself, so shoppers find it by colour and confirm it by name.

Cooler shelf of Ely's salads in the new labels: Zesty Tabouli in black and lime, Classic Potato Salad in brown and gold, Moroccan Carrots in maroon and orange, and Classic Coleslaw in dark green and gold

Colour finds it. The name confirms it.

Same frame, same type, a colour for every flavour you can read from the end of the aisle. And it’s built to grow: flavour seventeen gets a new colour pair, not a new design. Every pair is checked against the food it sits beside.

  • Classic Coleslaw
  • Creamy Coleslaw
  • Garden Coleslaw
  • Classic Potato Salad
  • Moroccan Carrots
  • Zesty Tabouli
  • Gourmet Beet Salad
  • Mediterranean Chick Pea
  • Tuscan Bean Salad
  • Golden Quinoa
  • Middle Eastern
  • Spicy Moroccan Olives
  • Eggplant & Peppers
  • Festive Edamame
  • Marinated Mushrooms
  • Homestyle Macaroni
Illustration: three Ely's tubs seen from above in a deli case, each lid carrying the same black Signature Salads label in English and French, with the salad colour showing through the clear sides

From above: the lid.

Deli cases get shopped from above. Every lid carries the same Ely’s label, “Signature Salads / Salades Signatures,” while the clear sides let the salad show its colour.

Illustration: three Ely's tubs at eye level, each with the same front label layout in its own flavour colour, one carrying the front-of-pack symbol

Eye level: the front.

Every tub shows the same front: name, French, claim, weight and any legal marks, each in its fixed spot. Only the colour changes.

Legal in Canada, down to the minimum sizes.

Close-up of the Health Canada front-of-pack symbol on an Ely's label: High in / Élevé en Sodium, Health Canada / Santé Canada

What a Canadian grocery label has to carry.

  • Common name English and French, equal prominence.
  • Net quantity, in metric On the principal display panel.
  • Ingredient list Both languages, with allergens declared.
  • Nutrition Facts table The Canadian format, not the US panel.
  • Front-of-pack symbol When high in sodium, sugars or saturated fat. Minimum size set by pack size.
  • Dealer name and address Who made it and where to find them.
  • Best-before date Required on foods that keep 90 days or less, like fresh salads.
  • UPC barcodeRetailer requirement. Not the law, but no barcode means no shelf at the major chains.

Need the symbol? Check your label in two minutes.

We turned the rules behind Ely’s labels into a free FOP Symbol Calculator.

Answer a few quick questions about your package. It tells you which Health Canada “High in” symbol to use, the smallest size it can print at, the clear space around it and where it’s allowed to go on your label. Free, with no sign-up.

  • The formatThe right Health Canada layout for your pack.
  • The sizeMinimum width and clear space, in millimetres.
  • The spotThe part of your label it can go in.
Try the FOP Symbol Calculator
The FOP Symbol Calculator’s answer for a 130 × 90 mm label high in sodium: symbol 7(BH), at least 36 mm wide with 1.5 mm clear space, in the right half of the label, with a Symbol Facts table and a diagram of where it can go

Built for the people who pack it.

A label that only looks right when it’s applied perfectly will look wrong by Thursday. Ely’s labels are applied by hand, so the dieline was planned around the tub first: corners kept clear, clean edges to line up against, and nothing important near the seam.

Hand-drawn label dieline on paper: info, main and French panels, hatched no-go zones at the tub's corners, a half-inch overlap and a barcode panel
Working dieline: info, main and French panels, the tub’s corners hatched out as no-go zones, a half-inch overlap and the barcode panel.

  • Read the law

    Every regulation that applies, line by line, before a single layout. Front-of-pack minimums, Nutrition Facts format, bilingual rules, Quebec.

  • Build the system

    Colour, type and grid fixed across all sixteen flavours first, so no flavour gets a one-off that breaks the range later.

  • Translate properly

    Professional translators write the French. Then every layout is re-checked, because French changes the shape of everything.

  • Proof on the tub

    Labels go on real tubs before print, so nothing lands on a corner, under the seam or off the edge.

Food labelling in Canada, answered.

What does a food label have to include to be legal in Canada?

The common name and net quantity in English and French, an ingredient list with allergens, a Nutrition Facts table in the Canadian format, the dealer’s name and address, and a best-before date on foods that keep 90 days or less. Foods high in saturated fat, sugars or sodium also need Health Canada’s front-of-pack nutrition symbol.

What is the front-of-pack nutrition symbol?

A black-and-white magnifying-glass symbol that tells shoppers a food is high in saturated fat, sugars and/or sodium. It became mandatory on January 1, 2026. Its minimum size is set by the size of the package’s principal display surface, and it can’t be shrunk to suit the design.

Does my food label have to be bilingual in Canada?

Yes. Mandatory information must appear in English and French, with equal prominence. In Quebec, the Charter of the French Language goes further: every inscription on the product needs French, and no other language can be more prominent. Exemptions exist, but they’re narrow.

Can I use my US Nutrition Facts panel in Canada?

No. The Canadian Nutrition Facts table differs from the US panel in required nutrients, serving sizes and layout, and it’s bilingual. Most US packs need a redesign for Canada, not a sticker.

Do US brands need new packaging to sell food in Canada?

Almost always. Between bilingual labelling, the Canadian Nutrition Facts format, metric net quantities and the front-of-pack symbol, a US pack is rarely compliant as is.

How do you keep sixteen flavours straight on a shelf?

Give each flavour its own colour, taken from the food in the tub, and lock the layout and type across the range. Shoppers find their flavour by colour and confirm it by name.

Who is BEND Creative?

BEND Creative is a Toronto creative agency for grocery and CPG brands, built by insiders from Canada’s largest grocery retailer. Services include brand strategy, social and campaigns, CPG packaging, retail and in-store marketing, and Canadian legal compliance.

  • CPG packaging
  • label systems
  • dielines
  • bilingual labelling
  • front-of-pack compliance
  • Nutrition Facts tables
  • Quebec French
  • colour systems
  • print production

Selling food in Canada? Let’s talk labels.

Get Bent.