A new trend in the food and beverage industry is the sale and delivery of “meal kits.” This is a unique way to sell food to customers because it provides a recipe and all the raw ingredients required to make that recipe but relies on the customers themselves to do the actual preparation, cooking, or baking of the meal. It’s a compromise between a completely home-cooked meal assembled from household ingredients and calling for delivery of a meal made at a restaurant.
However, if you’re thinking of entering the business of selling meal kits, one important factor to consider is insulated packaging and the use of ice packs.
What Is An Ice Pack?
An ice pack is a cooling agent included with the meal kit to maintain a lower temperature. Whether you include an ice pack when shipping a meal kit depends on several factors. The chief factor is whether your logistics chain is, from start to finish, a “cold chain.” This means that the food is kept in an active environmental control system at each delivery step, such as a refrigerated truck.
If, at any point, your shipment must spend some time outside a refrigerated environment, you will need an ice pack in the meal kit to preserve the temperature of the ingredients.
Insulation
Insulated packaging is a complement to the ice pack. With insulated packaging, the lowered temperature created by ice packs is maintained. Insulated packaging prevents warm temperatures from outside from seeping into the meal kit and prevents the cool air from the meal kit from escaping into the environment.
This combination of ice packs and insulated packaging is crucial for keeping raw ingredients fresh. It is especially important meat, since meat left in warm temperatures may start to rot, and prevent a health hazard to customers who then attempt to prepare a meal with it.
