Veg and non-veg marking tape for cloud kitchens and home sellers

At 9 pm on a Saturday, a cloud kitchen counter has twenty bags waiting for riders. Two of them look exactly the same. One has paneer tikka, the other has chicken tikka.

That is the moment marking tape is made for.

The short answer first. FSSAI's labelling rules require the green veg and brown non-veg symbol on packaged food and against every dish on your menu, including the menu a delivery app shows. They do not say anything specific about delivery bags or tape. So a veg or non-veg tape is not a legal label.

It is a practical tool that helps your staff and your customer tell orders apart at a glance, and it seals the bag at the same time.

What does FSSAI actually say about the veg and non-veg symbols?

The rules sit in the Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations, 2020. I read the current consolidated text that FSSAI published in September 2025 (Version VIII), because a lot of what is written online about these symbols is loose. Here is what it says, in plain words.

On packaged food, regulation 5(4) applies. Every package of non-vegetarian food must carry a brown filled triangle inside a square with a brown outline. Every package of vegetarian food must carry a green filled circle inside a square with a green outline. The symbol goes on the front of the pack, close to the product or brand name, on a contrasting background. The old brown circle for non-veg was replaced by the triangle in these regulations.
The minimum size depends on the front panel area. On a panel up to 100 sq cm, the square must be at least 6 mm. Above 2,500 sq cm, it must be at least 16 mm.
Non-veg means anything with whole or part of an animal, including birds, fish, insects and eggs, or any product of animal origin. Milk, milk products and honey do not make a food non-veg. If egg is the only non-veg ingredient, the seller may say so in addition to the symbol.
On menus, regulation 9 says food service establishments must show the veg or non-veg logo against food items on menu cards or boards. FSSAI set the compliance date for this chapter as 1 July 2022. Delivery platforms, which the rules call e-commerce food business operators, must take this information from the restaurant and show it on their website or app.
For food served for immediate consumption, regulation 8(4) says food from hotels, caterers, halwais and other food service vendors must come with, or display, some minimum information at the point of sale or serving. The veg or non-veg logo is part of it.
The pack symbol is not required on mineral water, packaged drinking water, carbonated water, alcoholic drinks, liquid milk, milk powder and honey. The menu rules do not apply to event caterers and kitchens that run fewer than 60 days in a year.

You can read the full text in the FSSAI Labelling and Display Regulations compendium.

What does this mean for a cloud kitchen or a home food seller? Two practical things.

First, the legal symbol lives on your menu, your app listing and the printed label of anything you sell pre-packed, like pickles, cookies or namkeen. Print it there, in the right colour and shape.

Second, no regulation names delivery bags or tape. Regulation 8(4) asks for the information to come with the food or be shown where it is sold, and for a delivery kitchen the customer buys on the app. So the bag is not clearly covered either way, and marking it is a sensible extra, not a replacement. If you are unsure how they apply to your exact business, ask your food safety consultant or the FSSAI helpdesk. I am a packaging man, not a lawyer.

Why mark every delivery bag if the law does not ask you to?

Because a wrong bag costs far more than a roll of tape.

I have heard this from enough food sellers to take it seriously.

Think of a Jain family that has ordered from you for months. One evening a non-veg bag reaches them by mistake. Your refund is the smallest loss.

The customer is gone, and the review stays.

Marking helps in four places:

At the packing counter, when veg and non-veg orders are packed side by side.
In mixed orders, where one bag has a veg thali and a chicken curry. Mark each container as well as the bag.
In a cloud kitchen running two or three brands from one kitchen, where the bags look the same.
At the customer's door, where a pure-veg household can check before opening anything.

The tape does not replace your kitchen's own system of separate counters and utensils. It is the last check, the one the customer can see.

How do you seal a food delivery bag so it is tamper-evident?

Kitchen staff in gloves packing a takeaway order into brown paper bags — Photo: Mikhail Nilov on Pexels

Tape across an opening shows if someone has opened it. That is the whole idea. Pull the tape off a paper bag and it usually tears the paper or leaves a clear mark, so the bag cannot be closed again neatly.

Wipe the container lid dry. Hot food sends steam up into the lid, and no tape holds well on a wet surface.
Put one strip across the lid joint of each container, so the lid cannot lift on the bike.
Fold the top of the paper bag twice.
Run one strip across the fold and down both sides of the bag, so the strip wraps the edge.
Press the full length with your thumb.

I will be honest about this. Plain packing tape makes tampering visible. It is not a security seal, and nobody should sell it to you as one.

Which tape should you buy: veg, non-veg or the mixed pack?

Veg and non-veg marking tape rolls from PackSmith, green for veg and red for non-veg

We make all three marking tapes in BOPP film, 1 inch wide and 35 m long per roll. The difference is the marking and the pack. I would start with the 1 inch width for food, because it tears easily by hand and one strip sits neatly across a lid.

Tape	Marking	Size	Packs of
Veg tape	Green, VEG	1 inch x 35 m	12, 24, 36, 48, 72 rolls
Non-veg tape	Red, NON-VEG	1 inch x 35 m	12, 24, 36, 48, 72 rolls
Veg and non-veg mixed pack	Half green, half red	1 inch x 35 m	12, 24, 48, 72, 144 rolls

The mixed pack is exactly half and half. A 12-roll pack has 6 veg rolls and 6 non-veg rolls. If 80% of your orders are veg, I would buy the veg tape on its own and a smaller non-veg pack.

Otherwise you end up with a drawer of spare red rolls.

One honest point about colour. Our tape uses its own marking: green for veg and red for non-veg. The FSSAI non-veg symbol is brown. So our tape is a kitchen and customer marking, not the FSSAI symbol, and it does not replace the symbol on your menu or label.

We also sell printed food delivery tapes. A red tape for Zomato partners, 1 inch x 65 m, in sets of 12, 24, 48 or 72 rolls. And a white tape for Swiggy partners, 2 inch x 65 m, in sets of 6, 12, 24, 36 or 72 rolls. These are our own products. They are not made for, affiliated with or endorsed by Zomato or Swiggy. They are sealing tapes. For veg and non-veg marking, use the marking tapes above.

How many orders does one roll seal?

A 35 m roll is 3,500 cm of tape. So the answer depends on how much tape each order takes.

Tape per order	What that looks like	Orders per 35 m roll	Orders per 65 m roll
10 cm	One strip across one lid	About 350	About 650
15 cm	One strip across a folded bag	About 230	About 430
25 cm	Bag fold plus down both sides	About 140	About 260
40 cm	Bag plus two containers	About 85	About 160

Take a kitchen sending 30 orders a day at about 25 cm each. That is roughly 225 m of tape a month, or about 7 rolls of 35 m. The 12-roll pack lasts close to two months. Measure your own strip once with a ruler and redo this maths.

It takes two minutes.

Please check the per-roll price on each pack before you take the biggest one. We do not price every pack size on the same curve, so bigger is not always cheaper per roll.

How should you store tape in a hot kitchen?

Tape is one of the things we make at JPPL in Jaipur, and the rule I give every buyer is simple. Heat and moisture make adhesive tired.

Keep spare rolls in a closed box or drawer, away from the tandoor, the stove and the window.
Keep only one or two rolls at the packing counter.
Store rolls flat, not standing on their edge in a hot corner.
Use the older rolls first.
Do not tape with wet or oily fingers. Keep a dry cloth near the counter.

Questions food sellers ask

Is egg veg or non-veg under FSSAI? Non-veg. The regulations count eggs as non-vegetarian food. For packaged food where egg is the only non-veg item, the seller may say so in words, in addition to the brown symbol.

Can I use your veg tape as the FSSAI veg symbol on my packaged products? No. Print the proper symbol on the product label, at the right size, near the product name. Use the tape to seal and mark the delivery bag.

Does the tape stick to foil containers? Test it before you buy in bulk. Stick one strip on a clean, dry foil container, leave it for an hour in your kitchen, and see if the edges lift.

What else does a small food business need at the packing counter? Our small seller's packing station starter kit lists what to buy first. If you also sell sweets or snack boxes for festivals, our Diwali hamper packing guide covers sealing food inside a gift box.

Delivery is free across India on every order, and we dispatch in 1 to 2 working days. If you run more than one kitchen and want a monthly supply, write to us through the contact page. We are happy to work out the roll count with you.