A lot of food startups are great to begin with, but they do come with some challenges. Most of this happens in the logistics, shipping, and the packaging sectors, as this can be a major part of the struggles one deals with to get success with their packaging.
Subscription boxes, different kits for cooking, even snacks and cookies are a great way to impress people, provided they are intact and fresh. You need good packaging to help with this.
The right food packaging helps with food displays, stands out, and also slows down the spoilage. You should make sure that the packaging options that are chosen are compliant with both the local and the state regulations.
Good Options for startups that are FDA Approved
You want to make sure that the options that you use for your food packaging are approved by the FDA in order to slow down the spoilage of food and make it fresh.
Most are rated in a way to allow for direct contact of food.
There are some however that might need food separation, and other guidelines for contact packaging, and here, we’ll go over each of those.
Vacuum Packaging
This is the most popular, and it creates a vacuum seal.
One of the biggest sources of the degradation of food is the oxygen that happens when it’s shipped, and this enhances the spoilage of items. Vacuum sealing is the best way to ensure product safety by lowering the amount of oxygen within the package.
How this works is pretty simple. You put the food in a barrier bag, and then, with the use of a machine, it encloses this within the product. It’s then sealed with an atmosphere modified in order to keep the food safe in the packaging.
The atmosphere there is a lot different from our natural atmosphere, most of the time without oxygen in order to preserve the shelf life and extend it without the use of a preservative.
Some of them also have specific bags that create a barrier against oxygen. Some barrier bags may also feature other means to increase the properties of the barriers. You may however want to get a co-extruded bag, which is made from different materials. All of these are FDA approved, and it keeps the oxygen out.
Overwrapping
Another one that’s done by a lot of butchers, confectioners, and even grocers and those in the food industries is overwrapping. It extends the shelf life use and is lightweight with a variety of advantages that come with this.
It’s basically those meats and veggies that you see on the grocery trays. This is basically a machine that uses a wire that’s electrically heated, cutting the film to wrap this around the products. The bottom portions of these trays are placed on heated plates of fabric, in order to mend and shrink the wrapping that’s around the bottom portion of the tray. This look, when finished, is a conformed packaging that’s placed in the tray of the product.
They come in different levels of thickness too, and some are even tinted, in order to reduce the exports of light to the products that are there. Some also work with heavier meat cuts too.
There are other types of shrink wrapping that are used too, in order to bundle the products together, the PVC can shrink wrap this, but it’s not used for direct types of food contact, but instead for bottles and other types of food packaging.
Whatever you use, know that it must be approved by the FDA to help with the packaging.