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Why convenience is such hard work: roundtable participants talk about packaging for convenience.

Article Excerpt
Editor's Note: This roundtable originally appeared in Food & Drug Packaging, one of R & FF's sister publications. The round-table included packaging professionals at leading food processing companies who were asked how convenience figures into their work. The discussion ranged from simple embellishments of existing products to fanciful new technologies.

Convenience is one of the most important aspects of food packaging. Time crunch, aging consumers and the need for new retail outlets are some of the factors driving today's push for convenience.

Q: What does convenience packaging mean to you, and how has it evolved recently?

Carol Cady: When we think of convenience in packaging, we think about the full cycle of use for consumers, starting with the shopping experience and simplifying that by making it easy for the consumer to find the product on the shelf or to put it into their shopping baskets either by having it as a kit (where they don't have to go to multiple aisles in the store) or having it in a multipack (where they don't have to put individual pieces in their cart). It goes from shopping, to storage in their pantry or refrigerator, to all the different features around usage, to cleanup and then disposal.

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The thing that probably changed the most is not just thinking of convenience for the consumer, but also thinking about convenience for the customer. This includes both our retail and food-service customers, in terms of efficient distribution and replenishment. Are the cases easy to open? Do the packages simplify product rotation? Also, how do we simplify the whole back-of-house operation for our foodservice customers?

John Caporaso: We're thinking of convenience very holistically. I think the key phrase is "the purchase continuum," starting with finding the product and shopping for it, and obviously including opening, using and going on to disposal. The scope of the notion of convenience has expanded outside of the consumer's immediate interface with the product at home.

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Jane Chase: The biggest change that I see is the evolution in the consumer's definition of what convenience is. It has moved from a clearly defined one-point focus to a broad definition that includes many facets, including portability, easy opening, easy to dispense, able to be cooked outside the home. An emerging requirement is at-shelf convenience. With all the options out there, consumers need to be able to find you. If the consumer can't find your product, they'll never see the convenience in your offering.

Nancy Limback: The definition of convenience packaging to Sara Lee consumers encompasses all of the characteristics discussed already but does not mean that all have to be delivered at the same time or in the same way for every product application. For instance, our consumers consider our bread bags reclosable with a simple twist tie, but our Ultra Thin lunch meats are perceived as "resealable" when packaged in a GladWare container. To our consumers, resealable provides the best package seal possible to extend freshness of the product after opening--little undesirable (air/contamination) gets in--little good (flavor/moisture) gets out. You...

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