Food Packaging For Restaurants The HEB Way

The pandemic resulted in an instant shutdown of many businesses. The non-essential food industry, in particular, received a significant hit, as most of the businesses had to remain shut for weeks or months. Among various other types of businesses in the food industry, restaurants had to endure huge losses.

Restaurants had to remain shut for the initial few weeks of the pandemic. Then various states started staged reopening of those restaurants. With too many restrictions in place, it was hard for most of the restaurants to cover losses incurred during the first few weeks of the pandemic.

Even after reopening, most restaurants and eateries had to work in a limited capacity to comply with their respective state laws, which meant overall decreased attendance.

With most of the regular customers of restaurants choosing to stay at home and cook meals rather than going out, most of the supermarkets experienced a significant boost in sales. People started purchasing food items and toiletries quite rapidly, which resulted in a dramatic rise in demand.

This overall scenario resulted in significant growth in sales of frozen foods and pre-cooked meals. Keeping these demands into consideration, most of the supermarkets had to stock up these in-demand food items.

The story was no different for HEB supermarkets. They were more than happy to meet rising demands, but they also took notice of restaurants that suffered losses due to the pandemic.

A brief history of HEB supermarkets

HEB supermarkets form a large chain of supermarkets, whose headquarter is located in San Antonio. This chain of restaurants has spread to 340 locations throughout Texas and Northern Mexico. This chain of supermarkets started in 1905 when Florence Butt used her $60 of life savings to open a storefront in a small town of Texas.

This business opened its first supermarket after years of consistent hard work in 1942. This supermarket was named HEB.

This business kept up with steady growth over the decades. In 1984, they started a food bank program, which dealt with the donation of unsold, salvageable foods across different market areas.

In 2020, it was HEB that took initiative to help restaurants in the state by providing them with food selling options to help their finances.

Packaging foods for local restaurants

Even though HEB continued to see rising growth in their business, they didn’t forget about the troubles their fellow in the restaurant industry were experiencing. So they reached out to those businesses and offered partnerships to help them during these testing times. They asked those restaurants to prepare foods, which the HEB would package and sell to the customers.

The best thing about this partnership was that they offered those restaurants 100% of the profit.

Their method included packaging of those foods in carded packaging, displaying them in coolers or other display cases with complete instructions about how to make the food items ready to eat, and also notifying customers about the source businesses preparing those foods.

HEB business, in this entire scenario, is not just to package foods, but it has been to help struggling businesses to prevent them from going down. This approach also sets an example of how to earn profits by helping others and build a more cooperative environment.

 

Color Outside the Box with Unexpected Hues

Most boxes are brown. Yes, you see them all the time. What if I told you that you should rethink that?  You’re probably thinking “it’s too expensive! How could I choose a color?” Again, these are problems that many have. But, if you keep the alternative, a brown box, you won’t stand out. your brand gets lost in the sea of people, and becomes far from memorable. 

Branding through memorability and contrast is something that you should look into. Rethinking your branding with unique contrasts and changes allows you to stand out, and makes you all the most special. 

So what colors should you use? What’s the best approach for this? we’ll drive into that right now.

Science Behind Color in Logistics 

Color plays a large part in customer perception and how they approach you. 

Blue conveys trust, and it can also be seen as a calmness in some packaging, such as health and wellness. 

Green means sustainable and natural, good for eco-friendly products that you wish to give to others. 

Yellow conveys energy. Lots of energy. It also can be use with red in order to convey passion and love. 

Black, while it might mean sadness in certain cultures, conveys luxury with boxes in the US, so don’t be afraid to use it if your packaging is high-end. 

Color Coding for Efficiency and Style 

There’s a lot of internal operations that go into the color coding of the items that you have. Making sure that the outside matches the inside is a big part of this. if your packaging opens’ match, it can look jarring to customers, and might impact how they feel about this.

You should also use box packaging that fits the internal parts to convey the customer excitement that’ s felt. Getting customers excited about your packaging will in turn, convey more for them to build and grow upon. Again, with a lot of color packaging, it can bolster all of the customer excitement, and in turn, really impact not just current shipments, but future as well. 

Ink-Free Options for colorful Packaging 

Okay, so we’ve talked all about how important color is.  but, one problem with colored packaging is the inks. Inks, especially those made with patrol, are not good for the environment. Though there are alternatives, it is hard to use that as a box color.

However, dyed kraft is a good option for you to use, because it is easy to remove. It also is much more sustainable. 

Tinted paper fill is another. Again, paper is sustainable, and with a unique tint, it can create a colorful piece of packaging that you’ll love to show off to others.

Finally, you’ve got colored adhesives. Some paper tape is used with color as an Added feature, thereby making it something magical for you to behold. 

All of these don't use ink, and they can be used to make the colors of your packaging stand out, especially when a customer gets the item within. 

Balancing the Aesthetic and Recyclability 

At the end of the day, there’s one thing that you should work towards.

Being sustainable.

[opt for paper-made boxes and products. These are better for the environment, and you have a lot of options too. Kraft paper is the best, and if you can use reusable boxes, that’s breath.

Consider dyed hemp. Hemp is also sustainable, and it can push forward reusability as well. with boxes, having some reusable features is really important.

Keep it sustainable as much as you can, and embrace unique colors to fully enhance your experience.