Over the past decade the look and feel of food packaging has undergone dramatic change. Restaurants, food trucks and specialty food brands across all industries have adopted natural kraft packaging as the packaging method of choice in order to portray authenticity. This shift from expensive heavily printed glossy packaging to simple minimalist kraft packaging designs has changed the way that food businesses package their products and how they tell the brand story.
Often mistaken for being less expensive and having a cheap, low class look and feel, forward thinking food businesses are beginning to recognize the real value of kraft packaging including the unique visual benefits of natural kraft materials. Now not only seen as environmentally friendly and sustainable, kraft packaging provides a memorable and tactile brand experience for customers.
\We see this throughout the food industry from fast casual burger restaurants using kraft burger boxes to authentic artisan bakeries using a range of natural packaging products for all of their take out containers. The “kraft packaging movement” is here to stay and for food businesses it is a design choice that proclaims environmental responsibility, speaks to quality and portrays a real authentic brand experience.
Table of Contents
The packaging of Kraft products communicates honesty and integrity to a sceptical and food-conscious market. The packaging’s honest and unprocessed appearance conveys natural ingredients, a touch of human hands in the making, and a farm-to-table philosophy. In an industry where consumers quickly criticise empty packaging rhetoric, Kraft packaging harnesses visual connections to handcrafted products and natural ingredients through its raw brown paper and fibre marks. It conveys honest ingredients, sustainable sourcing, and responsible business practices through a visible identity that consumers perceive through the packaging itself.
Research in design psychology has shown that natural materials in product packaging can evoke positive emotions. Customers who encounter natural materials such as kraft paper respond with emotions of trust, feelings of wholesomeness, and an awareness that the company is environmentally conscious. This natural material offers variations in texture, as well as subtle variations in color from board to board, resulting in highly unique and interesting packaging designs that add organic depth to products. While white or glossy packaging provide a clean appearance, packaging printed on kraft paperboard conveys a sense of high quality and creates a halo effect that actually influences customer’s perceptions of a product’s taste.
Our minimalist range of canvas kraft boxes forces brands to strip back their visual identity to their purest form, removing any clutter or interference that is not relevant to the product. Whilst initially it may appear to be a limitation, the lack of space to over adorn creates a premium feel, whilst simple items such as stamped logos, single colour prints or even unbranded kraft boxes can portray a more elegant and sophisticated image of a brand and its products. This restraint in packaging design shows great confidence in the food quality, allowing the presentation of the product to become the primary focus of the packaging.
Kraft packaging creates multisensory brand experiences by making the ‘feel’ a priority. By contrast to plastic or waxed coated materials, kraft packaging has a tactile quality which provides a rich sensory experience for the customer. Exchanging the smoothness of the packaging for a genuine natural material feel increases the chance of memorable touchpoints that create lasting brand connections. It seems that our emotional connection to a packaging experience is heightened by our desire to link the texture of the material to the relevant attributes and qualities of a brand.
Research in neuroscience has shown that the brain processes tactile information more deeply, engaging areas related to emotion and memory, than visual information. Foods packaged in kraft packaging benefit from this deeper connection to the brain, creating longer and more meaningful memory traces than foods packaged in alternative materials made from synthetic materials with visual similarity to kraft. The perceived handcrafted or artisanal quality of kraft packaging also creates perception of value without the corresponding higher price.
Tactile Design Advantages:
Kraft packaging offers significant cost savings to food service operators allowing them to improve the quality of their menu offerings through the use of better ingredients rather than expensive packaging production. By removing the need for bleaching, heavy coating and full color printing, Kraft packaging offers a saving of 20-40% over premium white boxes with complex graphics improving the bottom line of restaurants with very tight margins.
Because of their humble design, kraft materials can be even more cost-effective. Kraft packaging is commonly printed with a simple one-color stamp or minimal print to provide brand identity and relevant copy. This type of print costs a fraction of four-colour printing and can be changed quickly for shifting menus or branding. Even with inexpensive kraft packaging, K Packaging can help find greater savings, especially for smaller food businesses that lack a design budget for packaging development.
When searching for the perfect packaging to match your brand, it’s important to consider kraft boxes wholesale as a budget-friendly option for presenting food to customers. When buying kraft boxes wholesale, you can take advantage of lower kraft boxes prices when you order in mass, and it’s especially true compared to buying from a restaurant supply store, and way more so than with generic packaging stores. Many wholesale suppliers offer volume pricing that reduces the cost of each box by 15-30% to help businesses stock up on as many boxes as needed while still receiving top quality.
Additionally, working with one supplier means that you only need to manage one inventory, and since boxes made from kraft come in a variety of standard sizes, this can be significantly easier than stocking different colored or coated packaging materials made to specific restaurant sizes. Contact the supplier for details on box pricing and inventory management for your business.
Kraft packaging is ecological communications in action. Rather than simply stating a company’s commitment to the environment through green marketing, packaging made from kraft paperboard made from responsible forestry delivers sustainable environmental messaging. Consumers are wary of products with “green” labeling and are more likely to believe a company’s commitment to the environment through eco-friendly packaging and materials. The biodegradable and recyclable packaging made from natural materials delivers a sustainable message that environmentally conscious consumers find authentic and relevant.
Our range of affordable, natural kraft packaging materials feature the visible naturalness that clearly signals environmental benefits without the need for educational consumer messaging in the form of packaged-based eco-certification. Consumers automatically understand the natural & renewable qualities of unbleached, brown kraft paper packaging that easily decomposes to return to Mother Nature. This favourable impression of sustainability will transfer to a customer’s perceptions of the brand as a whole – whether that brand communicates organic ingredients, locally sourced goods or zero-waste operations. For food companies, this natural, eco-friendly packaging options clearly communicate eco credentials which align with organic, natural or Locally Sourced foods and beverages.
As local governments implement plastic bans and packaging taxes, there is a growing favoritism for packaging that is recyclable or compostable and a shift towards more kraft-focused packaging solutions. Those brands investing in packaging made with kraft recently may save a lot of money that would otherwise be spent on overhauling packaging in the future, and convey a sustainable brand image ahead of the curve and difficult for brands using plastic to reposition themselves with even a switch to a seemingly environmentally friendly packaging solution.
Rather than being a limitation, the design parameters set by kraft materials force designers to strip away packaging and product design superflation and distill pure forms that convey the most important brand messages. Working within the natural aesthetic of kraft materials compels designers to use typography, carefully place logos, and select colours to create stronger, more memorable brand identities than those achieved by offering consumers an open sliding Pandora’s box of unlimited design options.
We can add die-cut windows, embossing, debossing, or foil stamping to add a premium look and feel to really make the human touch of the kraft material shine. Customization options allow for sophisticated contrast between the natural kraft material and intricate design details, transmitting a message of high-end distinction without proclaiming it. Design elements look more powerful when thoughtfully applied in specific areas rather than smothering the kraft material with full-bleed graphics.
When a company is looking to create individualised brand identity, custom kraft boxes are a great option to achieve distinctive branding. By having unique kraft boxes with custom printing it offers more brand differentiation than regular kraft packaging with fancy printing. Unique kraft boxes have great potential to project a unique image of your brand by opting for custom designs with special box dimensions, unique packaging structure and by choosing appropriate material for boxes. We offer natural boxes made from natural products and when you add customisation to these natural products, it elevates your design effort to create premium packaging without the high price tags.
Packaging that resembles Kraft packaging has become synonymous with a farm-to-table dining aesthetic and immediately connotes notions of fresh ingredients, local sourcing, and seasonally-driven menus. The material-philosophy connection is so strong that packages made from kraft containers can immediately project images of high quality and authenticity even from companies that don’t really have a farmers market vendor-inspired culinary operation. The visual language associated with craft packaging offers a familiar aesthetic that food companies can use to project one kind of brand identity while creating unique contents and overall brand experiences.
This package has a rustic look that is great for food photography and food service presentations. The natural kraft look is better than competing packages because the neutral tone won’t distract from the colors and textures of the food it is packaging. The kraft packaging provides a framework to enhance the artistic creation of your food that consumers will want to post Instagram worthy pictures of! Now you’ll get organic social media marketing by your customers when they post pictures of your delicious looking food.
The texture and absorbency of kraft papers present designers with new considerations that diverge from traditional graphic design approaches for printed projects using coated papers, while also unlocking creative opportunities not available with more traditional stocks. The way that ink sits and interacts with the uncoated kraft surface introduces subtle variations and textures, and a designer who is willing to work with these inherent characteristics of the material can create work that is more organic and intentionally designed, and in many cases more compelling, than work that struggles to oppose the natural qualities of kraft.
Print Design Best Practices for Kraft:
Kraft packaging is perfect for telling a story about the origin, values and philosophy behind a product. Since kraft packaging components can feature natural-looking materials with a pure and earthy theme, they are able to reinforce verbal messages and tell customers all about sustainable practices, high-quality ingredients or authentic methods of making or preparing. Packs created with kraft packaging components look intriguing and help tell a story to customers about what a brand offers, reinforcing brand image and enhancing customer trust.
The shift to kraft packaging reflects a wider cultural shift to transparency, sustainability and authenticity over Artifice & Excess. The packaging typologies discussed here and adopted by food brands such as cereal boxes, fruit packaging, snack packaging and sauces and dressings contain kraft and relate to wider cultural shifts. Today’s food brands must demonstrate cultural literacy to reach today’s educated urban consumers. They must serve as culturally aware businesses that cannot be judged on a single product in isolation.
Looking for more creative inspiration and packaging design insights? You can also read the article, “Cardboard Dividers for Modern Packaging: The Ultimate Guide”
Unlock freebies for your creative projects. Explore a curated selection of fonts, graphics, and more - all absolutely free. Don't miss out, claim yours now!
Claim Free Freebies
