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MrTakeOutBags.com Foodservice Jesse Harster Blog

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A Look Back at the Best Newbies of 2017

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You don’t have to look far to see that it’s been a good year for new products on MrTakeOutBags.com. In 2017 we added many sought-after new items to our website. Each one was a successful addition, but some clearly became favorites among our customers. As this year comes to end we look ahead to what is on the horizon. But first, let’s take a moment to look back at some of our most popular new products.

Citrus au Natural Stackable Lunch Boxes

Ideal for packaged lunches at a corporate event or for packaging baked goods, the stackable handled boxes are a staple here at MrTakeOutBags. We wanted to offer a fresh color combo to our customers, so we came up with this exclusive “Citrus au Natural” look. The bright green and the natural brown kraft work well together, creating something both eye-catching and pleasing.

Red Ripple-Wrap Cups

Not just for Christmas and Valentine’s Day, these vibrant red ripple-wrap coffee cups work all year long. Just imagine customers walking out of your shop with these very distinct cups. They’re sure to get a lot of attention! Be the unique café in your neighborhood with these brand new paper hot cups.

Orange Meal Prep Containers

Our Cube plastic containers are one of the hottest-selling items on our website. With the surge in healthy prepared meals comes the growing need for sturdy, microwavable containers that are reusable and recyclable. When we first starting stocking the classic black option, they were flying off the shelves. We expanded to offer a bright lime green twist, and that saw a great deal of success. In 2017 we were excited to add a vivid orange container to the lineup.

Black chalkboard coffee bags

Admit it, you want your coffee shop to be different than all the others. And that’s great! We saw café owners utilizing our unique products to help set their shop apart from the competition. This year we offered another way to do just that with coffee tin tie bags that have a chalkboard outer layer. With a simple chalk marker or paint marker you can decorate each bag of coffee or tea, add personalized info on when the beans were roasted, or leave them blank for your customers to have fun with.

Have an item you’d like to see us carry? Let us know! Give us a call at 888-321-2248 or drop us a line at [email protected]. We aim to be your one-stop shop for all your food packaging!

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In Branding

Earth Inspired Salads: Branding for a local fast casual restaurant

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Since MrTakeOutBags is located in Pittsburgh, we are extra excited when we help out local businesses. And when they happen to sell health-conscious yet still irresistible lunches, we get downright giddy. We recently had the pleasure of helping Earth Inspired Salads get the printed plastic bags they needed.

earth-inspired-bag

Two Locations

The fast causal restaurant has two locations in office-heavy locations. The focus is on providing professionals with high quality and healthy lunches. Pittsburgh is known as a meat-and-potatoes town, but the folks at Earth Inspired Salads know there’s more to it. There is a big market of customers who care about heart-healthy meals. Need proof? Their first location has been in business for four years, and their latest location is approaching its second birthday.

Walking Billboards

“We love seeing our logo walking all around downtown,” says GM Britney Short. “Most of our business is takeout, so we often see people walking around carrying our bags around.” When asked how having a custom bag helps promote Earth Inspired Salads, Short says “It certainly keeps the conversation going. People bring it back to their offices and break rooms.” And with their updated bag design, she feels confident it’s the right conversation now.

The Better Bag

This is not the company’s first shot at custom printing. Unfortunately, though, their first custom bag (which came before we were introduced to them) was ill-suited for the business. A one color design with fonts that did not fit their theme was doing very little for their revenue or their image. Now, equipped with a bag that reflects their brand and as well as their aesthetic, Earth Inspired Salads is becoming an even bigger talk of the town.

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In News

Your New Year’s Resolution Begins Now

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Time to make the commitment: starting in 2018 you are going to stop wasting valuable advertising space by putting your company logo onto your packaging. Admit it, you told yourself before that you were going to do it, but for whatever reason you never got around to it.

Perhaps you think it’s too expensive, or that the minimum quantity required is much higher than the amount you need. Or maybe you’re expecting the turnaround time for a printed item to be months. Well, you would be surprised.

Price

Custom printing may be less than you think – not to mention that the revenue boost it can provide for a business is often very impressive. While a printed bag has a higher price tag than a plain one of course, the value that it adds is immeasurable.

our most asked about coffee cup

Minimum Quantity

This is where we really shine! We’re proud to say that we are able to offer some of the lowest required minimums in the industry. For many flat items (like boxes and bags) we can print as few as 1,000 pieces with a hot-stamping process. Looking to print coffee cups but not prepared to take on 50,000 units? No problem, we can print 5,000 of a size.

hot-stamped box

 

Turnaround Time

It’s true, custom items that are imported can take 14 weeks to arrive after an order is placed. That’s one of the reasons we work almost exclusively with American manufacturers. Lead times vary by item, but some things, like custom labels, are made in as few as two weeks (after final art approval).

Tribute Tea: custom labels.

With options like printed stickers, reusable grocery bags, and wine bottle carriers, there are a ton of options available for all businesses. Each business is different. Let us help you find the best way to get your logo out there, in front of potential customers.

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In Industry

Your Complete Guide to Shipping

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When it comes to shipping, people have a lot of questions. They want to know how to calculate the cost, how long an order takes to arrive, and how they can get a better deal on the final price of shipping. There are a lot of factors involved, so we put together this handy guide to help answer those questions.

First, let’s calculate your shipping

First thing’s first, fill your cart with your complete order. Since the shipping is determined by weight and destination, it’s important to have all the items in your cart.

Next you’ll want to fill out the shipping address. Adding the full address, rather than estimating by only the zip code, will provide the most accurate cost.

HINT: Delivering to a commercial address is less expensive than delivering to a residential address. For those who run their businesses out of their homes, this is still considered a residential address. If you have a commercial address that you can use, we suggest doing so.

Once you complete the address fields you can continue to the Shipping & Payment Options page. This will show three shipping methods to choose from: FedEx Ground, FedEx 2 Day, and FedEx Priority Overnight.

Estimate when the order will arrive

When viewing your shopping basket, you can click on “Estimate Shipping” to pull up a map. This map will show the approximate transit time for each region of the country. Please note that most of our products ship from our Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania warehouse. Orders of in-stock items placed by 2 pm Eastern will ship out that day. Anything that is in stock but received after 2 pm will ship the following business day. Some items do ship from our other warehouses and may be delayed. If you have questions about a specific item or transit time, please call 888-321-2248.

Now, let’s get that cost down

Curious as to why the shipping cost is what it is? For starters, many of the items we carry are heavy, often bulky pieces. They are not equivalent to shipping clothing, for example. Bakery boxes can weigh a lot! That’s why we include every order’s total weight in the shopping cart. Any order that weighs 200 pounds or more is eligible for a shipping discount. All you need to do is call our Customer Service representatives at 888-321-2248 and they can apply the discount to your order.

Other items aren’t too heavy, but they are bulky. Because they require a great deal of room in the FedEx truck, their shipping cost is determined by their dimensional weight, or how much space they take up.

But what about free shipping?

We get this question a lot, and for good reason. There are so many online retailers out there who offer free shipping. But is it really free? Often times the shipping fees are built in to the cost of the product in order to cover the shipping. After all, it can’t be free shipping for the retailer, right? They need to pay someone to deliver it. We believe that this is not very transparent, and here’s why: We ship most items from Pittsburgh, PA. It wouldn’t be right to charge our neighbors over in Ohio the same shipping price as we would charge to send something across the country. But when building shipping fees into the product price (and offering free shipping), this is exactly what happens.

Not finding the answers you need? Call our advisors at 888-321-2248 and they can help!

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In Food

Why Your Restaurant Should Offer Grab-N-Go Lunches

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Why Your Restaurant Should Offer Grab-n-Go Lunches

Step out for a quick lunch any given weekday, or pop into your local café over the weekend. Chances are you’re going to see a variety of prepared meals, packaged and ready to go. Nothing new there, right? But consider for a moment the quality of that meal compared to what the standard was just years ago. In many cases, there’s a shift in focus to ensure that pre-packaged lunches, dinners, and snacks are made from fresh, quality ingredients – sometimes even locally sourced. This growing trend is taking the dining world by storm, and progressive businesses are taking note.

What is fast casual and why is it gaining so much popularity?

Fast casual falls between drive-thru grub and casual, sit-down restaurants. Typically this appeals to people on the move who know that you don’t need full table service in order to get a good meal. And they also know that just because it’s fast doesn’t mean it’s processed or frozen.
Last year, The Washington Post published an article that helped to break down some findings from the research firm Euromonitor.From this we learned that “the market for fast casual food … has grown by 550 percent since 1999, more than ten times the growth seen in the fast food industry over the same period.” That’s a whole lot of Chipotle burritos and Panera bread bowls.

How can packaging enhance prepared meals?

We shop with our eyes, especially when it comes to food. Those who run a restaurant, café, bakery, or deli are very aware of this. That’s why when it comes to fast casual, we’re seeing so many thoughtfully arranged prepared meals, intended to entice busy lunch-goers and diners on the run. And when all this effort goes into a meal that a customer is taking home, you know that the packaging needs to be a cut above the rest.
Using the container that best fits the product is crucial. Because the packaging can make a product pop, and in turn increase sales, we see many fast casual dining establishments use carriers that provide at least a glimpse of the food. Food containers like the Bio-Pak View line http://www.mrtakeoutbags.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=02BPVWERTM&Store_Code=mrtakeoutbags can provide just that.
Or maybe you need a product that is as eco-friendly as it is practical, like these recycled kraft fry trays.
Perhaps your famous eggrolls need to stay crispy, and can do just that with the help of ventable plastic containers.
And sometimes a perfect, freshly baked bagel in the morning just needs a little something extra to meet peak packaging, like a sandwich bag.

Why go the custom route with fast casual?

Not only does a to-go container need to be the right type and size for a packaged meal, it should also reflect your brand. This leads to consistency within your shop as well as brand recognition. Not to mention it gets your name and logo out and about to wherever your customers may wander. Is your café’s famous soup served in a to-go cup that bares your brand name? You can be sure that will be seen around the office. Are your sandwiches wrapped in customized paper? That will certainly get noticed at the tailgating party. Your products are distinct, and your packaging should be as well.

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In Products

How Wine Bottle Carriers Can Help Your Business

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You may think it’s early to start thinking about the holidays, but when it comes to imported wine bottle boxes, it’s important to stay ahead of the game. These items sell out faster than anything else we carry – and for good reason, too. These Italian imported wine gift boxes are often used for packaging corporate gifts for the holidays, retirement, or business milestones. Other businesses, such as wineries, breweries, and boutique markets use these for specialty packaging and gift-giving.

For corporations

Plenty of businesses give gifts to employees and clients to show their appreciation, especially during the holiday season. The imported wine bottle carriers and wine gift boxes add a classy touch. The carriers come in one, two, and three bottle options, which allow you to decide the appropriate size of your gift.

Check out: The Argento Metallic Silver single bottle carrier

For boutique markets

It’s not easy trying to compete in the market today. Step up your visual appeal by packaging your goods in one of these boxes. With a wide array of colors, sizes, styles, and even textured finishes, an imported gift box is sure to get noticed. And it’s a great way to represent your brand. It can be used for wine, of course, but you can also package gifts, sample kits, and even clothing.

Check out: The Bordeaux Textured Rib 2 bottle box

For wineries and breweries

Of course, we didn’t forget about the companies that make all those bottle spirits! These are a must-have for wineries and breweries. Add a level of professionalism to your presentation and watch your sales improve. Take it to the next level by adding your logo to the box.

Check out: The Oro Matte Gold 3 bottle carrier

Remember, these and other imported items items can be printed to feature your logo on them. Learn more about that by calling one of our packaging experts at 888-321-2248 Monday through Friday, from 8:30 a.m. – 6 p.m.

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In Products

Pink Packaging for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

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Pink used to be a color that was saved for little girls, Pepto-Bismol, and piggy banks. But Breast Cancer Awareness Month has changed all of that. The month of October now brings about plenty of pink – all for a great cause. October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, with breast cancer survivors, their families and supporters (men, women, boys and girls from all walks of life) donning pink clothing and using pink products. They’re all showing support by bringing attention to this disease that affects millions of women each year.

MrTakeOutBags.com has a full line of pink food packaging products from cupcake boxes to take out bags. Or, choose our specially-marked boxes of pink tissue and the manufacturer will make a donation to Susan G. Komen® for the Cure, a national foundation supporting breast cancer research.

BTW: These items are STILL perfect for a little girl’s birthday party or for a baby shower.

Pink SWAG Bag                           

Choose from some great options when packing lunches, promotional products, gifts, food or retail products with our Parisian Pastry Gable Box, or our Parisian Pastry Shopping Bags.

Pink Boxes

Whether it’s a Pink Strawberry Tinted Individual Cupcake Box, or a Pink Strawberry Tinted 4 Pack Box, you can show your support for the strides being taken to defeat breast cancer with every package that leaves your shop.

Put a Pink Bow On It

Even the subtle expression of using a pink ribbon on your packaged products can signify your support for National Breast Cancer Awareness month. Check out our Beauty Splendorette Curling Ribbon, the Cupcake Design Ribbon, or the Hot Pink Single Faced Satin Ribbon.

Pink Tissue

Pink Menu Food Grade Tissue is one of the most cost efficient products available to show your support and add an elegant touch of pink. This particular product is specially priced in support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure® and its promise to save lives and end breast cancer forever. With every purchase, the manufacturer will make a donation to Susan G. Komen® for the Cure, a national foundation supporting breast cancer research.

Still have questions?

If you still have questions about pink packaging products? Check the product pages for more details, or give us a call at 888-321-2248. We’re here to answer your questions and to help you find a product that fits your needs.

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In Food

What You Need to Know About Meal Prep

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The latest fitness craze doesn’t involve crash dieting or so-called miracle pills. And it doesn’t require an expensive juicer, either. Instead, the newest buzz in healthy living is meal prep. It’s simple, easy to follow, and offers a lot more than just salads.

What is it?

Meal prep is perfectly portioned out healthy meals. They are made in advance so that when you’re ready to eat, you can just pop them in the microwave and have a guilt-free meal in a matter of minutes. Prepared meals like this are also great on-the-go. Bring them to work or the gym and know you have a meal you can feel good about. Plus, with the convenience of the meal being already made, it’s easier to resist the temptation of fast food.

Who’s doing it?

Healthy prepared meals are popping up all over the place, both online and in local markets. There are even lots of home delivery companies that deliver prepared meals right to your doorstep. With companies like Healthy Meals Direct in New York, PREP’D in Oklahoma, or Wolf Meal Prep out of Canada we’re seeing fresh and healthy options available all over.

What do you use for it?

Naturally, you want to package these meals in a container that is freezer safe and microwaveable. Ideally, the container is also reusable. Thankfully, we have just the thing. Reusable plastic meal prep containers from CuBE Plastics fits all these criteria. The standard look is a black base with a clear lid, but we like having options. That’s why we also stock lime green bases and bright orange bases. These help your brand stand out among the competition, but they also help your food presentation pop!

 

Already found the meal prep container of your dreams? Maybe it’s time to put your logo on it. Our Packaging Advisors can talk to you about the options that are available to help boost your meal prep business. Give them a call at 888-321-2248 to learn more.

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In Branding

San Antonio Specialty Bakery Refuses to be Generic

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Specialty goods call for specialty packaging.

At the North Star Mall in San Antonio, Texas there is a popular new bakery kiosk where new and returning customers alike are finding rare treats: mini doughnuts and mini churros. Karla Peña is the majority owner and CEO of Mini Delights. According to her, Mini Delights is the only spot in the area where you can find these delectable sweets. That, and the fact that they are a growing business trying to make a name for themselves, is what drove Peña and her team to custom print all of their food packaging.

Build brand recognition

“It was especially important for us to put our logo on the items,” explains Peña, “because we were trying to build our brand from scratch. We didn’t want generic items. Instead, we wanted our products to carry our logo.” And it’s clearly having a positive impact on the business.

“We definitely see people come in because they saw our logo. They tell us, ‘Your stuff is all over our break room, so I had to come see what the craze is all about!’ We have seen immediate, direct impact from the printed packaging,” says Peña. “If the logo wasn’t there, people wouldn’t know where to find us.”

Maintain a common theme

Part of the business strategy was to keep things consistent too. Peña explains that the logo needed to be on everything, even the paper. “People take our food and walk around the mall, or post pictures on social media.” And the social media has been a huge push for Mini Delights.

“Customers will post that they finally found a place that has mini churros and mini donuts. Often people tell us that they haven’t had these things since they were kids, eating them at the fair.” Peña says that Mini Delights is the only place in San Antonio to carry these items. “And if customers were posting pictures of the items in a nondescript bag, it wouldn’t help. People don’t always link back to you, so putting our logo on the packaging is the best way to go.”

Put your logo on everything

Are customers posting pictures of your food? Then it’s time to start thinking about putting your logo on the packaging. Give our experts a call at 888-321-2248 to learn more about how you can boost business and increase brand recognition.

 

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In Products

Grease Resistant Paper: Are you doing it right?

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Dear Food Industry,

To those who serve up loaded nachos, stacked cheeseburgers, and anything that involves bacon: we thank you. Like so many other adoring fans, when we indulge in greasy food we enjoy every moment of it (except the heartburn). Everyone deserves a cheat day, right? But the one thing that truly turns us off from these delicious treats is when we see a paper bag or a basket liner become translucent from the grease.

That can easily be avoided, though, when you choose the right paper packaging. With the correct food tissue, your food presentation remains as lovely as when it left the kitchen, rather than tainted with oil slicks. For takeout, make sure you have the best-suited paper bags to avoid grease seepage.

Food Grade Tissue

Whether it’s a basket or tray liner, or a sandwich wrap, food tissue works as the first defense on grease. So make sure you get it right. There are four standard grades of tissue paper available: lightweight, high performance, ultra performance, and grease resistant. If you’re a bakery and you need tissue to grab a pastry and put it in a bag, you’ll want to opt for the lightweight. Many restaurants are better served by the high or ultra performance, depending on the severity of oil. And grease resistant is perfect for wrapping sandwiches.

Get even more details right here.

Paper Takeout Bags

Burger joints, listen up. When we order a burger and fries to go, we prefer not having the grease transfer to our pant leg or car seat. Avoid this mess with a grease resistant lunch sack. With a variety of sizes – and colors – available, it’s easy to find the ones that work best for your meals. Find grease resistant recycled brown paper Kraft bags here and grease resistant white paper bags here. And for fries, opt for grease resistant, oven-safe small paper snack bags.

Pastry and Sandwich Bags

Doughnuts, buttery croissants – even toasted sandwiches – deserve the right type of paper bag packaging. Many of the sweet treats that are made with butter require a paper bag that will slow down the transfer of grease. Keep your customers’ fingers free of oily messes by using the right paper pastry bags. For sandwiches, go for the gusseted larger bags. And for on-the-go snacks, try out the grease resistant double-opening paper bags.

Not sure if you’re using the right paper packaging for your takeout food and baked goods? That’s alright, we have experts who can help with that. Go ahead and give our Packaging Advisors a call at 888-321-2248 Monday through Friday from 9 am to 6 pm. They can help get you the right option for your needs.

Using the right paper and ready to put your logo on it? We can help with that, too. Check out the work we’ve done and give us a call.

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