Food Packaging without Brand Labelling a Wasted Promotional Opportunity

It seems that with every visit to a supermarket or a food supplier such as a greengrocer or butcher, there is a food product being packaged in a new and different way to what has become the norm. Salad ingredients are a perfect example. It wasn’t that long ago that to prepare a salad required the purchase of a number of different salad ingredients that then needed to be washed, peeled, chopped, diced or sliced. These ingredients were then tossed around in a bowl with some salad dressing, before the salad was considered ready to eat.

This all took some time, and in answer to the demand for ready-prepared foods, even the humble salad drew the attention of food packaging suppliers looking for a new market to expand their range of packaging. Salads now come ready mixed in a variety of choices e.g. Greek salad, Caesar salad, plain salad, all neatly packaged in plastic and appropriately labelled. Some even have a sachet of the required dressing packed inside, ready to squeeze over, toss and serve.

Meat products were also seen as another packaging opportunity and it is now commonplace to buy larger items like beef, pork or lamb roasts, pieces of corned silverside and similar products shrink-wrapped in plastic and labelled with a use-buy date to protect the consumer. They also come sealed in plastic in a flavoured marinade, with seasonings, so that all the consumer needs to do is pre-heat the oven, take off the packaging, place the roast in an oven pan and come back two hours later when it’s cooked.

With these innovative and time saving packaging methods increasing in number and variety, it is a logical move then, for the packaging to be used as another method of advertising and promotion. All the major supermarkets and food chains have jumped onto the bandwagon of food packaging design and now present these products with their own logo and advertising slogans, along with the required labelling information. This keeps their brand awareness uppermost in the mind of the shopper, but at the same time, ensures that the contents are fresh and free of contaminants.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of different food products on supermarket shelves around the country. Well designed food packaging is essential if the item is to be easily found by the consumer amongst the range of other like products. The colour, style and design of the packaging can mean the difference between the product moving quickly off the shelves or languishing at the back until finally it is not being stocked at all.