Labl.it is one of the South Coast’s fastest growing tech startups, providing commercial kitchen automation to thousands of establishments nationwide. Since their launch, their product has been a hit with kitchen staff and restaurant managers.

The Situation

Labl.it’s success had invited deals with some major enterprise clients. They demanded more complex functionality and a scale that their product wasn’t ready for at the time.

9 months into a full platform rebuild, their project stalled. The new system was still not ready for launch. With only 5 weeks left to onboard their enterprise clients, Labl.it needed a team who could deliver something quickly, without letting them down.

Labl.it approached Novatura to take over the project. This pivot wasn’t an easy decision, as they had sunk significant time and resources into their current project. Changing directions like this takes real nerve, but they resolved to take the risk to improve their odds of success.

The Code Audit

To start with, we audited the existing codebases to see what could be used. There was a mobile app frontend, a back-office portal frontend, and a backend. We concluded that the frontend codebases were good to keep for now, and would save us time in the delivery. However, the backend could not be used, so we resolved to rebuild it from scratch.

Requirements Workshop

We spent some time with the Labl.it team in their Southampton office, aiming to understand and scope out the outcomes they needed the new system to deliver. Since the specification was mostly to clone the old system, we collaborated closely with the Labl.it team to detail as much as possible about the original system’s goals and features.

With the scope determined, our task was:

1. Reproduce all existing features
2. Improve performance and scalability
3. Add support for enterprise features
   • Multi-site management
   • User hierarchies
   • Role based access control

The scoping allowed us to do one thing particularly well. The most critical part of the project was to design the new database architecture. In doing so, an understanding of the current and future needs of the system helped to ensure we built a strong foundation that would last.

A Critical Migration

The plan was simple in theory: deploy the new backend and swap it with the old one. We had designed our backend in such a way that the new interface was virtually identical to the old one, meaning the frontends shouldn’t be affected much by the swap. This approach was a compromise, inheriting some technical debt in exchange for speed and ease of adoption.

Another issue was migrating all of Labl.it’s customer data from one system to the other. With kitchens printing labels every day and adhering to strict allergen regulations, this had to be achieved with as little disruption as possible.

When the time finally came to perform the swap, our strategy worked. The payoff was an operational system delivered just in time, ready to onboard their enterprise clients. Now that the urgent deadline was out of the way and more than 1,000 customers had been migrated successfully, the next items on the roadmap could be tackled.

Upgrading the App

The next step was to improve Labl.it’s React Native app, adding new features, improving performance and polishing the user experience. We were able to produce an app that was faster and more reliable than the previous version. In the kitchen, reduced loading times and better offline capabilities meant less time spent on labelling and better customer satisfaction.

To coordinate the release we collaborated with Labl.it and an agency called Blue Frontier, who were going to be taking over support on the project when we were finished.

Handing Over

Labl.it’s customers work round the clock, and a platform running in a thousand commercial kitchens needs support cover that can match that. Labl.it chose Blue Frontier to take on their support needs.

With a smooth handover, both teams could move on to their next big projects. Kudos to the team at Blue Frontier for their support throughout!

Where are Labl.it now?

The new system has been live since 2024, and is used by all of Labl.it’s customers. The product satisfied the enterprise customer needs, thanks to the upgraded capabilities and performance.

As of August 2024, the system was being used at over 1,000 establishments, with over 1,500 devices deployed, and 400,000 labels printed every week. Today, in 2026, Labl.it is trusted by more than 4,000 UK kitchens. To date, they’ve printed over 47 million labels.

It’s been great to watch that growth, and even greater to know that they didn’t just overcome their roadblock - they’re trail blazing in pursuit of their mission. Learn more about Labl.it and how they help kitchens stay compliant and efficient, at https://labl.it.

If your project has stalled and the deadline is looming, we’re not interested in whose fault it was. The first useful step is to find out what’s worth keeping, because the fastest way through is rarely the one that throws everything away.

If you’re in this situation, get in touch. We’ll get the ball rolling..