Kennesaw, GA-based Wise Foods worked with Maddock Douglas on package graphics for the 4- and 1-oz bags for the baked, not fried snacks.
The packaging is a lamination of a matte-finished, reverse-printed 60-ga biaxially oriented polypropylene/1.2-mil metallized BOPP. The material is printed by gravure in eight colors by Northeast Packaging Materials, at its plant in Chile.
Wise’s goal for the four-flavor new line was to gain positioning in the mainstream snack aisle of supermarkets. So, says Gino Chirio, senior account executive of Maddock Douglas, “we didn’t want the packaging, the personality to skew too much towards organic-natural foods. Wise wanted these products to live next to Wise’s existing snacks. Our challenge as a design team was to make it very mainstream looking, while the package still calls attention to the extra product features, like all-natural and 70-percent fat reduction.”
When MD package designer Tim Presley looked at substrates, he thought the matte finish helped relate to an all-natural feel. “It doesn’t have that glossy, shiny finish of a typical chip bag,” he says. “We think the matte finish denotes a specialty item, like a ‘home-grown’ product.”
Thanks to a combination of factors—the product, the process and the package—Wise Foods marks the packages for six months shelf life, or at least twice that of a conventional fried product, says Jordi Ferre, Wise Foods’ vice president of marketing. “This really enhances our distribution since it reduces the risk of stales. In snacks, shelf life is a strategic issue. We plan to ship direct to warehouses, outside of our normal markets.” Wise Foods’ traditional market area is 20 East Coast states.
The products are filled into 4-oz ($2.29) and 1-oz (79¢) bags, recognizing that promotional prices will be lower. On the other hand, Ferre says he knows retailers that will move the small bag to 99¢ to improve their margins. —AO
