The not so humble pizza box – packaging.

The not so HUMBLE pizza box

Daniel Schwitzer, director of communications & sustainability, at packaging company, amipak, gives us his take on the power of the pizza box.

ICONIC

As one of the most popular and recognisable dishes worldwide, most of us can name our favourite pizza quicker than we can dial our local takeaway. A piping hot circle of molten cheese, quick and easy to eat, and loaded with tasty toppings, there’s a reason why pizza is one of the most popular dishes on the planet.

While the event around which pizza packaging history revolves is a subject of debate, many credit its widespread introduction to the founder of a certain global pizza chain – Tom Monaghan.

The humble pizza box is a relative whippersnapper, born as recently as the mid-1960s at a time when large-scale pizza delivery was transforming the way we consume food. But making it from oven to doorstep isn’t always plain sailing. And in my opinion, businesses need to box clever to stay ahead of the competition at a time when the foodservice industry is again growing rapidly.

A GREAT PIZZA WORK

The modern pizza box is a modern marvel of minor, but well-formed proportions. Its simplicity allows it to circumnavigate many competing constraints. Seal it up too much and the moisture will make the dough soggy. Vent it too much and you lose the heat.

So, how do you get a warm, steam-emitting foodstuff from oven to doorstep inside 30 minutes without delivering a lukewarm, soggy mess? The solution lies in the box material. Simply slide the hot pizza into a corrugated cardboard box. Yes, the pizza still degrades a little over time, but products like these give your food products the best chance of travelling well.

Pizzas are humid, crispy, and slick all at once, so the challenge is to keep the contents warm and release the right amount of steam to avoid creating a soggy, lifeless crust. Each flute of the corrugated substrate is a channel for steam to travel through and allowing steam to flow prevents condensation on the box’s interior.

Light enough for easy delivery and sturdy enough to sustain rough handling, corrugated boxes can help to keep pizza intact, hot, and fresh. When the consumer opens the lid, they’ll be presented with a warm, fragrant wisp of steam and a perfect pizza – the ideal opening experience.

A SLICE OF GOODNESS

However, these days, pizza boxes are so much more than a disposable cardboard box design with a lift top and folded sides, finished with a little illustration of a pizza chef...

From a packaging point of view, they tick plenty of vital boxes. They’re resistant, easy to produce and recycle, well insulated and ventilated to keep the food warm yet dry, flat-packed and easy to assemble, and their stackability makes them ideal for transporting. But for many businesses, the boxes also represent a still as yet untapped marketing collateral - a chance to impress the brand upon customers. A perfect blank canvas for personal touches to enable connection with the customer.

In terms of visual value, boxes have somewhere between five to eight minutes to visually engage with the consumer. Customised pizza box printing can be one of the most compelling strategies to give consumers the ultimate level of experience. On top of using vibrant and eyecatching design, businesses have taken to turning the box into augmented reality board games, and even printing QR codes that link through to mood-setting Spotify playlists.

A good packaging partner should be able to work with your specific menu and customer needs to develop a shortlist of options that can be used in a variety of ways. With tight kitchen spaces and even tighter budgets, it should only take a handful of packaging products to fit your full menu.

So, from an 18” family-style pizza to a variety of side dish packaging, to corrugated liners and tripods too, some of the most desirable takeaway food around can now be served in appealing, customisable and table-ready pizza packaging. Not only can it maintain the food’s same beautiful look and feel, it helps fulfil the versatility of your menu, standardises portions, and drives the overall aesthetic you’re working to.

Products should preserve the optics of the dish and help

maintain quality, freshness, and temperature. Our solutions, for example, go the extra mile by being breathable, odourless, microwavable, customisable, space-saving, and crucially, designed to fi t into your existing waste management system. Many are compostable and recyclable too – now key to today’s more eco-conscious business and consumer.

MORE DEMANDING

As demand for takeout and on the go foodservice continues to grow, restaurants and other food delivery services need more from their packaging, especially when it comes to sustainability.

Foodservice vendors are now tackling sustainability with renewed vigour. The global proliferation of legislation around packaging waste dictates this and consumers can, and do, vote with their wallets if they don’t like your sustainability credentials.

There have been advancements, particularly around making pizza boxes easier to recycle. Our greaseproof corrugated liner and tripod, for instance - which help to prevent the soggy lid from sagging down towards your pizza - mean that once you’ve scraped any leftover crusts into the bin, the takeaway box can go straight in the recycling bin.

Our simple food-grade certifi ed pizza liners have been designed to help to safeguard the recyclability of the whole box, in fact. Keep in mind that waste recycling plants reject tonnes of otherwise acceptable cardboard pizza boxes each year because of contamination with too much grease, melted cheese spillages, or passata smears.

In my view, there are three main issues for the takeaway industry to tackle today - single-use packaging, delivery challenges and food presentation – in turn meaning that pizza packaging requires close attention. So, as humble as the pizza box may be to some, it remains a great example of simplicity being the mother of invention.

Biodegradable UK fi rst

For the fi rst time in the UK, claim Just Eat, they and UEFA introduced biodegradable food packaging at a major football match. In collaboration with Notpla, Just Eat provided its seaweed-coated biodegradable packaging at the recent UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 Final which took place at Wembley Stadium on 31 July.

On average, mass sporting events often generate up to seven tonnes of waste, according to UK government data (UK statistics on waste), with Just Eat saying that their introduction of a more sustainable food packaging solution will help to minimise this waste. The cardboard boxes are lined with a coating which is unique in the way it replaces usual plastic, or bio-plastic, lined takeaway containers commonly used in the food industry. To ensure the boxes can be used as food packaging the seaweed-based coating is designed to be water-resistant and greaseproof. This innovative packaging is both recyclable and home-compostable and will biodegrade within four to six weeks, just like a piece of fruit.

Just Eat and UEFA also worked with Veolia, Wembley Stadium’s resource management partner, on this trial to ensure the sustainable packaging will be separated from other waste and recycling for treatment at an anaerobic digestion plant (this plant treats food waste and other organic matter to produce enough renewable electricity to power approximately 6,500 homes annually).

Jaz Rabadia, head of responsible business and sustainability at Just Eat Takeaway. com said: “Using our global sponsorship partnership with UEFA is a perfect way to showcase this sustainable packaging initiative within the football industry, giving Just Eat the chance to drive and test new innovations with football fans. We’re committed to using our scale and infl uence to drive a more sustainable future for the food delivery industry and we’re so excited to see this come to life at such a huge sporting event.”

Michele Uva, director of football & social responsibility at UEFA added: “The circular economy is an important pillar of UEFA’s Football Sustainability Strategy 2030. Working with Just Eat to assess aspects of a food and beverage circularity pilot project at the world’s biggest women’s national competition match is an important milestone in UEFA’s eff orts to minimise the impact of football on the environment and drive resource effi ciency and cost savings. Building on best practices of Just Eat and other stakeholders, we are developing a practical guide to help us achieve zero plastic waste and food waste – within UEFA, across UEFA events and collaboratively across European football.”

The development came after Just Eat had also announced that it has launched a new initiative to encourage girls and women to get involved in football by providing 101 grassroot teams with the ultimate starter pack, and expert advice from industry veterans. In 2018, Just Eat made a commitment to tackle plastic pollution across the sector. Since then, the company says that it has removed single-use plastics from its online shop for purchase by its restaurant partners and have embraced innovation to fi nd solutions to the packaging challenge in the takeaway sector. Their approach is to identify new single-use and reusable solutions, testing them with restaurant partners and customers, and analysing results with a view to scaling the most suitable options.