Sonia Couto, MenuSano Founder:  Our goal was to make Nutrition Labelling Simple, Affordable, and Compliant for Food Businesses Worldwide

Inside the SaaS platform helping food manufacturers, restaurants, and supplement brands stay compliant without breaking the bank.

In a world where consumers are increasingly prioritizing health and wellness, one company has been quietly transforming how the food industry approaches nutritional transparency. Founded in 2014, MenuSano is a Toronto-based SaaS company with a global footprint, designed to bring clarity, compliance, and convenience to food labelling. What began as a solution for restaurants to provide accurate nutritional information has grown into a comprehensive platform serving a wide range of sectors, from food manufacturers and bakeries to hospitals, schools, and major restaurant chains.

At its core, MenuSano offers nutrition analysis software that empowers food businesses to create compliant nutrition fact labels, calculate recipe costs, and meet stringent international labelling regulations across Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. With clients like Shake Shack, MOMOFUKU, Pizza Nova, and Canopy Growth, MenuSano has quickly become a trusted partner in the food tech space.

But the company’s story is rooted in something deeper. “The rise in diet-related illnesses like obesity and diabetes was the motivation to create a tool that helps businesses make a real difference,” says Couto. “I wanted to eliminate the barrier of high lab costs and make compliance accessible for everyone.”

Today, MenuSano not only simplifies nutrition labelling but also enables recipe experimentation, cautionary ingredients, generates custom reports, and much more. This empowers both small startups and large enterprises to meet health-conscious consumer demands with ease. By marrying technology with a mission for better public health, MenuSano is not just keeping up with the industry; it is leading the way.

In conversation with Sonia Couto, Founder of MenuSano

MenuSano was built in partnership with Konverge Digital Solutions. How did this partnership shape the development and innovation of your platform?

We saw firsthand how powerful custom software could be when applied to real-world challenges. MenuSano was initially developed as a product within Konverge, giving us access to a highly experienced software development team and years of enterprise-level problem-solving know-how.

This foundation allowed us to pivot fast, innovate continuously, and stay lean without relying on VC funding. When we restructured, we used Konverge’s development muscle to rebuild the platform in a way that could scale globally. That partnership is what allowed MenuSano to go from a side project to a serious SaaS contender.

 Your platform promises to make nutrition analysis and compliance both accessible and affordable. How does MenuSano simplify complex regulatory processes for its clients?

Food labelling regulations are notoriously complex and vary across regions. MenuSano removes that barrier by offering pre-configured compliance algorithms for Canada (CFIA), the US (FDA), and the UK. Our platform includes databases like FDA, CFIA and allows clients to create recipes and the system automatically calculates required rounding rule values—such as % daily values with just a few inputs for each country.

We’ve also introduced tools like PDCAAS for protein quality, and front-of-package label formats to meet the latest regulations in Canada. We obsess over these updates, so our clients don’t have to.

What industries or client segments have most benefited from MenuSano’s offerings, and how do you tailor your solutions to their unique needs?

We started with restaurants back in 2014, but in 2019 made a major pivot toward food manufacturing which has significantly accelerated our growth. Today, we serve food manufacturers, restaurants, dietary supplement companies, cannabis edibles producers, food labs, and even institutions like schools, hospitals and retirement homes.

Each industry comes with its own compliance challenges. That’s why we’ve built specialized features—like supplement label formats, and bulk import tools—to meet those needs head-on.

Our product Roadmap is created with our customer feedback in mind. When our customers give us feedback, we listen and continuously develop features that solve real problems for our customers at no additional costs. If our customers want something the platform may not have, we build it.

MenuSano integrates features like recipe costing, menu analysis, and labelling services. How do these components work together to offer a seamless experience for users?

It’s all designed to be intuitive. Our customers build their recipes by selecting the ingredients from our databases or creating a custom ingredient, then they select quantities, measurements, and cooking methods and from there they can generate nutrition facts labels, calculate recipe costs, analyze allergens, and even export compliant labels for packaging. Because all these functions are tied together, our users save time, reduce errors, and eliminate the need to switch between multiple systems.

Our subscriptions offer low-cost entry and the ability to cancel anytime once users no longer need the system, or yearly subscription at a discounted rate.

Given the ever-evolving nature of food regulations, how does MenuSano ensure it stays compliant and up-to-date across different jurisdictions?

We’re always tracking updates from global regulatory bodies. In 2024, we started building front-of-package labelling features ahead of Canada’s legislation going live in 2026.

To stay agile, we maintain a product roadmap that prioritizes regulatory updates, and we work closely with food labs and government advisors to ensure we’re not only compliant but ahead of the curve.

With customer satisfaction being one of your guiding principles, what does your support ecosystem look like for businesses using MenuSano?

Customer support is everything to us. Whether it’s onboarding, troubleshooting, or customization requests, we offer phone support, live chat, email support, onboarding tutorials, and personalized product walkthroughs.

We also prioritize ease of use—our platform is built to be intuitive and user-friendly, even for businesses without technical teams. From building recipes to generating compliant labels, our goal is to simplify the entire experience so customers can focus on what they do best.

Beyond support, we believe in collaboration. That’s why Sonia created a Customer Advisory Board—a group of engaged users from different industries who provide feedback, test new features, and help influence our product roadmap. Their insights help ensure that what we build solves real problems.

In 2025, we’re launching a new loyalty program and expanding our onboarding experience with platform-wide training videos. Our clients aren’t just users—they’re partners, and we treat them that way.

What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

Absolutely. 2025 is going to be a transformational year for MenuSano. We’re introducing:

• An AI Virtual Nutritionist to help users build balanced recipes and reduce food waste

• Auto-allergen detection tools for automatic flagging of common allergens

• Website widgets so clients can display labels directly on their sites

• International expansion into Mexico, Australia, and more

We’re also scaling up partnerships through our new API, which opens the door for us to work with food delivery apps and integration with POS & ERP systems. Simply put, we’re building the future of nutrition labelling—and we’re just getting started.

Meet the leader behind the success of MenuSano

Sonia Couto, Founder

Sonia Couto is the driving force behind MenuSano. With nearly two decades in software development, Sonia specializes in building and turning around underperforming tech products and turning them into globally recognized SaaS platforms. She’s also a breast cancer survivor, a podcast host, and a startup mentor who’s deeply passionate about helping tech startups navigate the challenges in the early stages of building a product. Her leadership style is pragmatic, purpose-driven, and laser-focused on creating products that solve real problems.

“When our customers give us feedback, we listen and continuously develop features that solve real problems for our customers at no additional costs. If our customers want something the platform may not have, we build it.”