AU-LighLabs

At a glance

“Light Labs lets us scale testing across brands without the chaos. Everything’s in one place, everyone’s on the same page, and nothing slips through the cracks.”

Merisha Torrano, Vice President of Quality and R&D, Initiative Foods

About

Initiative Foods is one of the largest co-manufacturers in the baby food industry, producing for some of the fastest-growing and most quality-conscious brands in the U.S. As regulations tightened and testing expectations evolved, Initiative needed a partner that could keep pace with both volume and rigor, without sacrificing quality.

Problem

Initiative Foods was juggling slow lab turnaround times, manual result handling, and a disjointed process for managing multiple brand relationships, all under the pressure of evolving regulations like AB 899. Their team was spending hours each week transcribing test results by hand, emailing PDFs to brands, and switching between systems just to place or track orders. It was not scalable, and it certainly was not fast.

Impact

With Light Labs, Initiative Foods reduced test turnaround times to just 72 hours, eliminated manual COA transcription, and brought test result management across all brands into one centralized system. At the same time, they cut costs. Now, their team operates more efficiently, moves faster, and stays fully aligned across every brand they support.

Deep dive

Cut Turnaround Times in Half

Before Light Labs, Initiative was stuck waiting up to 10 days for test results, which meant holding excess inventory, delaying production, and constantly following up with their lab. With limited visibility, testing felt like a black box. They’d send off samples and have to manually follow up. Now, results come back in just 2–3 business days, with real-time tracking built in. Initiative can test, get answers, and make decisions, all in the same week.

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“This isn’t just faster testing — it’s testing built for how we actually work. We finally have a system that fits our pace and priorities.” – Merisha Torrano, Vice President of Quality and R&D, Initiative Foods

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Manage All Brands in One Place

Before Light Labs, managing multiple brands meant juggling inboxes, shared drives, and many email threads just to share and track results. Internal teams spent too much time hunting for files or clarifying test outcomes, and staying aligned took more effort than it should have. Even answering basic questions meant digging through scattered systems.

Now, everything lives in one centralized place. Initiative can toggle between brands, track progress, and pull up results in seconds. Their partners get secure, brand-specific access which means no more PDF ping pong or chasing answers. It’s faster for Initiative, clearer for their brands, and easier for everyone to stay aligned.

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Raised the Bar on Testing Precision & Compliance

Initiative Foods supports brands operating in one of the most heavily regulated spaces in consumer goods: baby food. But legacy labs didn’t offer the precision or transparency brands needed to feel confident, especially with the rollout of AB 899. Detection limits weren’t low enough and teams had to re-evaluate whether their former labs could meet the requirements of new regulations.

Through Light Labs, Initiative now runs sub-parts-per-billion testing for lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury, exceeding national standards with one of the most rigorous and precise testing capabilities in the country. Everything is transparent and exportable. Brands get clear answers, and Initiative gets a lab partner that gives them confidence.

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Replaced Manual Transcription with Automated Exports

Test results used to arrive as PDFs and someone on Initiative’s team had to manually copy every value into their internal systems. It was slow, tedious, and left room for human error. This meant hours of data entry every week. With Light Labs, test results easily map to Initiative’s internal quality systems through a data export feature. The team saved 5 hours a week and doesn’t think about transcription anymore, they just get the data and move forward.

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“We used to chase PDFs and manually re-enter test results. Now we have real-time access, fast turnaround, and total visibility — across all our brands.” – Cullen Ankenman, R&D Lead

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Ready to modernize your testing?

Whether you’re a brand or a co-manufacturer, Light Labs helps you move faster, stay compliant, and eliminate testing bottlenecks — all from a modern, shared platform.

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