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Building A Better Business
Send That Holiday Food Successfully With Proper Packaging
Dennis Jenkins
Are you getting ready for holiday food season? If so, you may also be getting ready to mail a lot of food over the next couple of months. If you're new to sending food, don't worry -- it's actually rather easy to get everything to its destination in good shape if you take some protective steps.
Tins or Cardboard?
When you mail food, you need to use two boxes, an inner box and an outer box. The outer box should be a heavy-duty cardboard box meant for mailing, but the inner box can be something like a cardboard cake box, a cookie tin, or another package. For the inner box, you might want to strongly consider using a metal cookie tin (even if what you're mailing isn't cookies). The metal is stronger and will resist crushing more than thin cardboard should something happen to the package. Just remember to seal up the tin once it's packed and the lid is on.
Small Groupings
Package the food so that you don't have more than a few items packaged together with no divider. In other words, place a small number of items in a paper cupcake cup or small bag, and repeat with the other items. For example, if you're mailing cookies, place maybe three or four (give or take) cookies in one cup or wrapper, and repeat. Otherwise, if part of the box gets jostled and the food breaks down, the crumbs may be contained to just the wrappers in that one section.
No Edibles as Packing Material
Sometimes you see websites with artfully arranged cookie packs and colorful liners -- and something like popcorn used as cushioning material. Please don't do this; unwrapped food like that can cause a number of problems:
- Grease or oil from the food can soak through the box.
- The food can attract pests as the box sits in the mail delivery warehouse (even if you ship overnight, if the warehouse is already battling pests, they'll find your package pretty quickly).
- Any smells from the food can transfer to other letters and packages waiting to be delivered as well (you might not mind the smell of your food, but would you want someone else's food odors attaching themselves to the cookies you're sending?).
- The unwrapped food would not really be safe to eat because the box's surface could shed bits of cardboard or dust into the food.
If you just can't resist the idea of everything in the packaging being edible, try these options:
- Wrapped, store-bought tea bags.
- Air-tight, wrapped packages containing the food you were going to use for the packing material.
- Fully sealed and unopened store-bought packages of small crackers, pasta, gourmet rice, and so on. Put these in zippered plastic bags so that if the food's packaging is torn somehow, the food won't spill everywhere.
Talk to the delivery service you plan to use and to a mailing supply shop like Chicago Mailing Tube Co. to find strong mailing tape and sturdy boxes. You can also ask the staff what they've seen work well for people shipping food.
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