Tips for Pizza Box Packaging

 

Introduction

Whether you are a caterer, restaurateur, owner of a food truck, or a bakery, it is important to think carefully about what will highlight your cuisine, your products, and your brand.

What are the single-use food packaging solutions today in the fast-food sector, take-out or home delivery? What are the innovations? Given that food packaging influences sales, let's take a closer look at three basic food packaging: macaron boxes, trays, and bags, and study their eco-responsible alternatives to reduce their ecological footprint.

Basic packaging

 The box

In the family of single-use food packaging, there is, of course. For your pizzas, cakes, pies, quiches, hamburgers, wraps, or pasta box, cardboard packaging is on the rise.

Whether sober or in shimmering Italian colors, pizza boxes are generally made of corrugated cardboard, light and stable cardboard. Their fluted structure (at the level of the intermediate layer of the cardboard) gives them good rigidity. Unfortunately, the pizza boxes are not resistant to grease or oil; it was not advisable to throw them in the paper bucket for a long time. Today, pizza boxes are increasingly recycled packaging, even soiled.

For pasta, wraps, or products requiring resistance to oil and fat, cardboard packaging can be fitted with a PE coating, which is highly resistant to humidity. This coating makes it possible to form an anti-grease and anti-water barrier on the part in direct contact with food. In addition, cardboard with PE is recyclable and goes in the microwave.

Long made of polystyrene, burger boxes are now mainly made of cardboard but are also available in more ecological materials, such as bagasse. This fibrous sugar cane residue is made from plant material. The bagasse box is suitable for the oven and microwave; it is also resistant to oil and grease, hence its interest and the development of its use.

The tray

For hot products, fatty or in sauce, what are the alternatives to the aluminum tray or the traditional polypropylene tray?

Aluminum food trays are appreciated for their maneuverability and resistance and used for reheating or baking dishes in the oven. This type of aluminum packaging can now be replaced by cardboard trays coated on the inside with a PE coating, also oven-safe.

Polypropylene food trays (PP trays), including the famous transparent fries tray, and sushi trays, for example, are widely used by the food industry because they are practical, resistant, and microwaveable. They are used for hot, cold, or sauce dishes. When they have a directly integrated lid, they are also called "freshness tray." This plastic is tear-proof and is used by manufacturers to manufacture products such as yogurt pots, cream pots, gourds, bottle caps, plastic dishes, straws, trays containing meals to be heated, etc.

Due to its ecological footprint, plastic packaging is criticized and gradually replaced. For fries, you can choose cardboard trays with a PE coating (anti-fat barrier), or cardboard fries cases without coating, or even models of tipped pouches or simple paper bags. This paper/cardboard packaging type is similar to the traditional French fries cone, with an artisanal presentation highlighting the product.

Bags and Sachets

Which bags to wrap and perfect the presentation of your kitchen? Several options are available to you. The traditional paper tote bag, with handles, advantageously replaces the plastic bag, cardboard box with lid a packaging solution widely criticized for its environmental pollution. In addition, the weight of a paper bag will offer it more or less resistance. Both types of products have gussets on the sides and a flat bottom. Take-out specialists widely use paper bags as an alternative to plastic bags, which underline a brand's ecological commitments to its customers.

For your croissants, sandwiches, and other wraps, you can opt for paper packaging with or without anti-fat PE coating. In custom Packaging, "kraft" or white, these packaging are suitable for bakery products, with a weight sufficiently resistant to transport pastries without tearing. These bakery bags and pouches also increase the shelf life of croissants and pains au chocolate. For sandwiches, elongated paper bags are available with or without a window or greaseproof coating.

 

Rules for choosing food packaging before buying

There are many products in the food packaging and packaging market to protect, transport, and store your preparations. The development and research of new solutions will likely increase. In the meantime, between paper, cardboard, plastic, bamboo, corn starch, or sugar cane… How to navigate?

What food packaging makes it possible to combine quality, eco-responsibility, and pleasant design with satisfying consumers?

Cardboard packaging is developing strongly in packaging intended for take-out, home delivery, catering, and snacking. But is the cardboard suitable for your brand values? To find out more about cardboard, its uses for food, its advantages, and its cost.