Beginning a food business is an amazing idea, but with all the concentration on recipes, ingredients, and taste, packaging is often neglected. Today, the container can often match the content or be even more significant.
It protects your product and conveys your brand message, grabs the attention of potential customers and sets you apart from your competitors.
Food startups face the problem of designing a unique custom food packaging solution that will attract consumers’ attention while not being too expensive. The good news? Here are creative ways to make your packaging cheap yet chic.
What Does Your Brand Represent?
One must consider what their food brand is all about before going straight to the design.
Is it artisanal? Eco-friendly? Fun and quirky? Branding is a method of communicating your company’s beliefs through the packaging.
If sustainability is a strategic requirement, one might focus on biodegradable or recyclable packaging.
On the other hand, if you draw attention to the product’s taste and fun, then the packaging might be brightly colored with cute drawings on it.
Simplify Your Design
When creating custom packaging, a simple design is necessary. It is sometimes said that ‘less is more.’
This way, the number of colors, fonts, and patterns is limited, and the effect achieved is quite a professional-looking packaging that does not cost much money to print.
Minimalism can also help you make your product easily recognizable on overcrowded shelves with the help of good organization of space and fonts.
Uniquely Add Inexpensive Materials.
If you have limited money, you must choose your materials carefully. Although glass or metal may be beyond the scope of a start-up, there are a wide variety of other affordable and environmentally friendly choices.
Kraft Paper
Kraft paper is a type of paper with a natural, unpolished look. Food brands often use it to give off a ‘back to nature’ or artisanal feel.
Because of its strength, kraft paper is cheap and can be used for several packaging purposes. It is perfect for custom stamps, stickers, or small printed designs.
Reusable Packaging
Try to use packaging that the customer can use for another purpose, such as jars, tins, or fabric bags.
This adds value to the product and provides your brand with sustainability, a trend becoming popular with consumers.
Custom Stickers and Labels
In this case, one can only go for printed packaging materials, which can be very costly and opt for plain or unbranded ones. Then, add value by having stickers or labels printed and stuck on them.
This technique can reduce the cost of production, yet the product can be personalized and branded.
Digital Printing for Small Quantities
Typical forms of printing, like offset printing, are normally suitable for large quantities and, hence, prove costly for small businesses.
Digital printing can print a small number at a cheaper price compared to offset printing.
This makes it ideal for startups who want to design their packaging but do not want to order large quantities at a time.
Digital printing also has the advantage of flexibility if you wish to produce small quantities of packaging or change the packaging design by season or for a specific campaign.
Make It Interactive
Interactivity is one of the most effective resources food startups can employ. Adding packaging that gets the customer’s attention brings a bonus: the customer’s feeling.
This can be something as basic as a QR code that leads to a recipe or the history of the used products.
You can also put call-to-actions on your packaging to encourage customers to share their experiences on social networks.
For example, you could use a branded hashtag and ask them to share product pictures. This will increase your brand’s exposure and create a community around your food product.
Never Underestimate the Unboxing
Unboxing, one of the most popular trends of the post-Soviet era, has become almost as significant as the packaging itself.
Consider the experience your packaging can give your customers when they unwrap it. These little details can go a long way, Whether through a card left inside the box, bright tissue paper, or a thank you letter.
Consider Sustainable Options
One issue that is ever more important to customers is sustainability because modern people are aware of the consequences of their actions on the environment. Incorporating environment-friendly packaging, therefore, not only looks trendy but may also be cheaper.
Choose bags of biodegradable, compostable or recycled material and inform your customers about your environmental policy.
Be sure to include sustainability information right on the package itself, be it a brief note about your packaging materials or a recycling icon, so that green shoppers know you are on the same page as them.
Conclusion
Finally, if you are thinking about designing the packaging, it could be easy and cost-effective. You can create unique yet affordable packaging by considering your brand and minimalism and choosing cheaper yet more creative materials.
Always remember that while great packaging is about creating that first impression, it is also about communicating your brand, interacting with the customer and providing them with that added value to their purchase.
