Packaging Question for Cold Food Products
Hey All,
Love this community and I'm so glad I found it!
We have a subscription box, and we are looking to branch into food. Does anyone have any experience or recommendations on how I can ship cold food products that need to be relatively refrigerated (not meat or anything). They just need to be relatively cold. I have heard about cold packs, dry ice (this scares me), re-freeze bricks, or insulin lined packages.
I just do not want to compromise the customer experience when they open up the box and see everything lined with foil, or wet bags from the ice packs haha
Does anyone have any thoughts on the topic? Any advice or guidance would be incredible and appreciate!
I have no experience shipping myself, but I've tried several of the Blue-Apron-like meal delivery services and I've noticed they've converged on roughly the same delivery system: A cardboard box with a larger insulated bag inside with ice packs. Depending on the company, the insulated bag is foil-like or compost-able (wrapped in a recyclable plastic cover) . The ice packs typically have you cut the corner off and drain them in to trash before recycling the plastic as normal, or instructing you to re-use them.
They ship meats in these that are safe to sit outside until you get home from work, and I can verify the ice packs are still mostly frozen at the end of the work day.
Thank you so much for the response! Yes, I should definitely see how Blue Apron and others similar pack their boxes. I wonder what the best approach is to finding out that information? I appreciate the information, it's really helpful!
Most have a discounted trial. Blue Apron is probably the biggest having IPOed so they're one you could try to get a feel. I've played with several, though, and like I wrote, they all pretty much have converged on the same idea. Box->Insulator Bag->Icepacks
I am totally going to check this out - I really appreciate the response!! This might be my best bet here to explore