Spotlight: Food & Beverage Packaging

Dufour Hors D'oeuvres Tap the Talents Of Independent Designer Louise Fili and Prestige Label for Frozen Foods Debut

As any food critic will attest, delectable hors d'oeuvres emerge from the confluence of outstanding culinary skills and artistic presentation. As any food merchandiser will attest, success at the retail level with a gourmet product requires a third element—creative, eye-catching packaging. For New York City-based Dufour Pastry Kitchens, Inc., one key to the company's rapid growth has been its ability to bring elegant products to market in expertly devised and designed packages. Careful consideration made their latest expansion—into the frozen foods market—a resounding success.

After effectively positioning the Dufour brand as a quality and taste leader in the "gourmet savories" category over two decades, introducing frozen Dufour products into national markets was the next logical move. Before taking this big step, the Dufour founders wanted to make sure they were embarking with packaging concept that was capable of limitless product line expansion at truly economical costs.

Dufour principles Judi Arnold and Carla Krasner were professionals in the concert music business back in 1984 when they realized the potential for setting off together in a new direction. "I was always a wonderful cook," explains Arnold, "and Carla was a ‘natural' pastry chef who has studied in France. We came up with the idea for ‘gourmet savories' when we independently decided to take time off from taking care of artists."

After cultivating and refining their product line, Arnold and Krasner began marketing their hors d'oeuvres nationally through food service distributors that catered to niche markets such as hotels, restaurants, caterers, clubs, and cruise ship lines. After meeting with both critical and financial success, the next logical step was distributing through gourmet retail stores. This required a packaging concept that would effectively showcase their upscale product to a brand new customer base.

The nature of the frozen product required the rigid characteristics of a folded box, but the breadth of Dufour's product line made boxing their product an economic challenge. "The cost of having to purchase and inventory different custom boxes for each of our more than 25 food items was considerably higher than our business model could bear," relates Arnold. "Our challenge was to develop a package that would succeed in building our brand and image through high-end graphics, while enabling us to remain within acceptable cost parameters."

The logical step was to consolidate all of the different products into a uniform box, the single most expensive packaging component. "Our goals were to design a sophisticated, bold, and striking package which would complement those very same characteristics of our prize-winning hors d'oeuvres," according to Arnold. "We felt a ‘cutesy' box would not match the image of hors d'oeuvres in general—and our superb quality product in particular."

Independent designer Louise Fili took these goals to heart and developed a magnificent graphical pattern that turned the base box into a freestanding work of art. Fili is a talented designer with many original and redesigned labels, logos, and book covers to her credit (www.louisefili.com). Fili's concept was to build the brand by creating a vibrant visual signature through the use of a bold red color over an intricate pattern. Differentiation among the many products would be achieved through the use of an equally bold and crisp complementary pressure-sensitive label that would be applied to each box.

The concept satisfied all of Dufour's requirements. However, bringing Fili's concept to a practical, cost-effective reality required some creative engineering of the construction of the label, which had to be exactingly applied vertically around three corners of the box. For this, Arnold turned to Prestige Label, the award-winning label converter based in Burgaw, N.C.

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Prestige was able to marry the striking color and graphics requirements with the unique application issues," says Arnold. "By crafting the label with strategically placed scoring and integrating that scoring into the design of the label, Prestige was able to provide us with a fantastic-looking label that was easily applied to a complex shape." Furthermore, reports Arnold, "We felt that an array of exciting, different color labels would make a great impact in the frozen food sections where our product is merchandised, and Prestige ensured the consistency and vibrancy of the labels in all temperature environments."

In addition, Arnold reports, Prestige remained extremely sensitive to the importance of keeping label costs low, working with Dufour during the design stages to minimize both initial and ongoing production expenditures. According to Arnold, "The design of the package has enabled us to enter many more markets, and reinforced our powerful brand presence immeasurably." Today, in addition to its traditional foodservice clientele, Dufour Pastry has a thriving retail presence in upscale gourmet retailers, as well as the added distribution through a variety of mail order and online merchant catalogs. "We receive many, many compliments on the package design," declares Arnold. "And we love it!"

A Healthy Measure of Humor Lends Equally Healthy Appeal to Martha's All Natural Mixes

It so happens that designers at San Francisco's Deutsch Design Works have a special place in their hearts—or stomachs—for mom-and-pop bakeries. The staff was so impressed by Martha's cake and baking mixes that they wanted everyone to know about them, and they hoped Martha could expand her market as well.

So after little deliberation, the staff brought Martha's products to the attention of the DDW partners, in hopes of pursuing a personal package makeover opportunity. "Well," the partners thought, "Let's just call them up."
Representatives from DDW, including Barry Deutsch, traveled a half-hour down the road to Martha Olsen's Great Foods, met with Martha herself (not her real name), and discussed the possibilities of a redesign. Deutsch approached this as a unique opportunity, and was generous with his company's resources in helping out Martha. "In many ways, they were generally enthusiastic that we would do this for them," remembers Deutsch, who was also creative director on the project.

Of the 20 or so makeover concepts, the one that eventually won out was the concept championed by the woman who probably loved Martha's mixes the most, Kate Greene, a senior designer at DDW. Greene's concept, aided by suggestions from Martha herself, was to personalize the brand with prominent images of the finished product, whimsical Martha poses, and humorous one-liners.

Deutsch says DDW often tries to introduce a little levity, whimsicality, or jocularity in package design, but usually to little avail. Clients are often amused—but almost never enthralled. Most commercial packaging is very constraining in that way because of the greater range of consumers that clients are trying to reach.

In the makeover, Martha and her company wanted to keep their homespun image while giving the brand much more personality. DDW started with fresh-from-the-oven illustrations aimed squarely at the taste buds. Next came Martha herself waltzing onto the label and serving up classic one-liners. The central images of the baked product and Martha, often interacting, are watercolors painted by Ted Burn, an illustrator from Texas. In refining the personality of Martha, Burn tirelessly tweaked the illustrations as the ideas for the 22 products in the line went back and forth and back again.

Martha Olsen's Great Foods began 15 years ago out of restaurant called Alana's Café, now the Redwood Café & Spice Co., in Redwood City, Calif. Roylene Brown, the daughter-in-law of "Martha" herself and now the vice president of the company, says that settling on the current design was a challenge. "It was really hard, because they were all amazing," according to Brown.

Once they decided on the concept that won over Martha, Brown and staff baked up each of the 22 mixes and took these samples to DDW to be photographed. DDW sent the photographs to Burn in Texas and the process of refining the concept began.

DDW updated every detail and aspect of Martha's packaging. To complete the whole experience, the clean-looking label and type treatments, according to Deutsch, are at once both wholesome and fresh, and the paper bag suggests a natural and organic product crafted with down-home care. The new design has allowed Martha's to achieve national distribution in Safeway and other retail chains.

"Functional" Beverage Category Gets Helpful Boost on the Shelf From High-Visibility Paperboard

Convenience is everything in today's world, and meal replacement beverages are the perfect solution for busy individuals who want a healthy alternative to a fast-food meal. Although demand for these products is growing, many manufacturers have had trouble meeting sales goals due to poor store placement and visibility.

The relatively new category of "functional" beverages has yet to find a permanent place on the store shelf to call home, and many consumers are simply passing by the product unaware that it exists. EAS, a leading marketer of meal replacement products, became one of the first functional beverage manufacturers to effectively utilize secondary packaging for their primary containers in the U.S.

Bill Wagner, national account manager for MeadWestvaco, sees secondary packaging increasing in the near future because the package allows the manufacturer to market one product in several ways. "The unique thing about that particular design is to mask the bar code," Wagner explains. Once a company establishes a single-serve market, one simple packaging step allows a multi-pack presence that may quickly lead to more total sales.

EAS has substantially increased its sales in the past two years. The EAS AdvantEDGE products use paperboard packaging with lively graphics and a metallic laminate to add to the impact. "These are great products that have a loyal following," says Wagner. "But it's only customers who are specifically seeking out these products who are able to find them in their local stores. MeadWestvaco's secondary packaging allows the products to have a greater shelf presence by simply being more visible to consumers. This eye-catching packaging helps the brand grow because customers are prompted to pick up the product to try it or learn more about it."

Many other functional beverage manufacturers are getting on board and are realizing that point-of-purchase marketing can help grow their customer bases. "We've seen tremendous interest from several functional beverage manufactures for this type of packaging," says Wagner. "Many manufacturers are beginning to see the value paperboard packaging is bringing to their competitors." The EAS multi-pack is made of a carrier coat, which also has an inherent wet strength for refrigerator-to-cooler durability.

Paperboard packaging also gives functional beverage marketers the ability to package their product in more exciting multi-packs that may encourage consumers to purchase more product. In addition, when the packaging complements the quality product inside, consumers become return customers, furthering the brand. "Many of our clients see an immediate lift in their sales," says Wagner. "Our packaging gets customers to notice the product and try it. It's the product inside and the convenience our multiple package adds that keeps them coming back again and again."

The functional beverage category may be growing quickly, but finding the right solution to store placement of these products is not showing the same progress. "You can't buy what you can't find," says Wagner. MeadWestvaco Corporation is headquartered in Stamford, Conn., and is a leading global producer of packaging, coated and specialty papers, consumer and office products, and specialty chemicals. MeadWestvaco Packaging Systems is an industry innovator and leading global supplier of high-performance multiple packaging systems and cartons for food and personal care products.