Foodservice Packaging Sales Expected to Increase

Southeast Kansas Business Journal

Posted 11/1/2010

Billions of single-use foodservice packaging products are used by consumers in this country every year, making them America’s most universal consumer product.  In one of several recent surveys done by the Foodservice Packaging Institute (FPI), 82 percent of foodservice packaging manufacturers in North America expect their sales volumes to improve this year, up from only 42 percent in 2009. Despite the challenges of a global economic recession, nearly half of operators expect their take-out (drive-thru, carryout or delivery) sales to increase this year.

Single-use packaging began in 1907 when Dr. Samuel B. Crumbine, a Kansas public health physician traveling by train across the state watched a tuberculosis patient share a drinking cup with a healthy six-year-old child.  He was so appalled at what he had witnessed that he began a campaign to ban the use of common drinking cups and eating utensils.  Hugh Moore, a young entrepreneur in New York City along with his brother-in-law created a cup made from a sheet of paper rolled into a cone with a folded flap at the bottom.  They called it the Health Cup, a product we know today as the Dixie Cup.

These cups were followed by single-use plates and bowls, wooden cutlery and paper food wraps that were used by the 1930’s to feed people who built remote dams, bridges and roads for the WPA.  By the 1940’s they were crucial for feeding defense factory workers during World War II.  The biggest single event in foodservice packaging came when two California brothers, Richard and Maurice McDonald, closed their drive-in restaurant and re-opened it six months later as a take-out facility with meals that could be eaten without glasses, plates and cutlery.  This was the birth of the Quick Service Restaurant, which revolutionized the way people eat all over the world.  This concept was and continues to be based on sanitary, affordable and high-performance single-use packaging.

Exciting new innovations are honored each year by the Foodservice Packaging Institute’s Innovation of the Year Award.  All of this year’s award-winning packages make single-use packaging easier to use, more sanitary, less costly to produce and more environment-friendly.  These innovations are vitally important for sustaining the foodservice packaging industry.  Exciting new items include a new insulated cup; pleated bags that hug hot food keeping it warm longer; a decorative party plate with disposal cutlery attached and Eco-Products made from renewable resources and recycled content, to name only a few

Bagcraft Papercon, operating in Baxter Springs, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Georgia and California converts paper, film and foil in a variety of specialty food packaging products. They began in 1947 and since that time have developed 17 patents and won many packaging awards.

Now the leading provider of paper-based flexible foodservice packaging in North America, Bagcraft Papercon’s broad range of products serve foodservice distribution companies, supermarkets, bakeries, restaurants, packer processors and retail stores with the most comprehensive product line of any major competitor.  With an estimated $50 – 100 million in annual sales and approximately 200 employees, their innovative, practical and sustainable products are customized to meet specific sizes, shapes, graphics and other performance requirements of each individual customer.  They are proud of their recycling record of 90% at the Baxter Springs plant.

The plant started in Joplin, Missouri and moved to Baxter Springs about fifteen years ago.  Jim Jaroszewki, the Operations Manager of Bagcraft Papercon states, “We have been very satisfied with this location and have no plans to change our location or workforce size. We’re looking at just sustaining through the next few years of hard economic times, focusing on research and development.”

Bagcraft sells compostable products to restaurants and service industries who are looking to meet green requirements or goals.  It assumes that larger cities and markets may have civic recycling programs that make sure compostable products get composted rather than end up in landfills. Sandwich wraps, which are compostable, are the plant’s biggest seller, with McDonald’s and Wendy’s as two of their best customers.

When asked if the recession has affected the fast-food industry because people are cooking at home or focusing more on local farm to market movement, Jaroszewki replied that this has not been a problem because fast-food restaurants are working to keep and add customers.  He continued, “We see more of the restaurants going to the dollar menus as well as the family menus and that has really sustained our business.”

By operating in multiple facilities across America, Bagcraft Papercon is moving into the 21st Century serving the needs of customers on a local, regional and national scale.

Bagcraft Papercon

3400 Bagcraft Boulevard

Baxter Springs, KS 66713-2964

Phone: (620) 856-2800

Website: http://www.bagcraft.com