A decade ago Flip Isard started selling Belgian style French fries on the streets of Phoenix out of a food truck. Appropriately enough, he called his operation “Frites Street”--i.e., “pomme frites” (French for “French fry”) that are sold on the street. Turns out his fries were so darned good that local restaurants wanted them, so by 2018 he sold the food truck and began selling frozen 5-lb bags of gourmet fries, cottage fries, and breakfast potatoes to foodservice institutions, restaurants primarily. Demand grew so steadily that by 2024 some kind of automated weighing and bagging was essential. So in the second quarter of 2024, his Scottsdale, Ariz., facility put into production an MFT 7 Ultimate Range vertical form/fill/seal machine integrated with an MHW 14-head combination scale. Both are from Maxpack.
“Before partnering with the Maxpack team, we were manually packaging everything,” says Isard. “That meant using hand-held heat sealers, scales, and pre-made bags—one at a time. It was slow and labor-intensive, and it made scaling up nearly impossible. Now we’re running a 14-head combination scale that consistently packs 5 lbs per bag. And running at about 15 bags per minute, that’s faster than we’re able to get them into cases. It’s the best kind of problem to have. On top of that, we’ve integrated batch/lot numbers and QR codes for full traceability, which has helped us pass SQF audits [certification managed by the Safe Quality Food Institute] with confidence. This setup gives us the foundation we need to grow and scale up further.”
High on the list of reasons Isard selected the Maxpack equipment was that firm’s established expertise in handling frozen food. It didn’t hurt any, either, that the Maxpack MFT 7 was a finalist in the 2022 Technology Excellence Awards sponsored each year by PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies.
Packaging at Frites Street begins as French fries exit the freezer. A vibrating conveyor drops the frozen product onto a flighted incline conveyor that brings the fries up to the combination scale. Maxpack’s Julio Ulich points out that the conveyors, also supplied by Maxpack, are designed for full washdown, which comes in handy in the frozen food arena in which Maxpack frequently operates.
Down to the bagger
Once the scale has selected which combination of 12 buckets comes closest to the desired 5-lb weight, those buckets release the French fries down the chute leading to the forming tube that pulls roll-fed flexible film around a forming collar. Heat-seal jaws close to form the top of the filled bag making its exit and the bottom of the next bag. Finished bags ride a short distance up an incline conveyor, through a Sesotec metal detector, and then to a station where operators manually case pack them.
Current production at Frites Street involves only 5-lb bags. But should the firm choose to branch into other sizes, the MFT 7 is known for being able to handle a broad range of bag sizes, says Ulich. “A lot of our customers are co-manufacturers, so we are very familiar with applications where maximum versatility in bag size is important,” he says.
As for the 4-mil flexible film used to package the product, it’s a two-layer adhesive lamination of a freezer-grade kraft and a nylon/PE lamination that brings good seal strength and tear resistance. It’s supplied by LK Packaging.
Date coding, of course, is part of the package, and in this case Maxpack integrated a Videojet thermal-transfer printer. As for throughput, the improvement has been impressive. When all of it was done by hand, it took three or four employees eight hours to package 6,000 lb of product. The same three or four employees now package up to 20,000 lb of product in four hours.
“This equipment has truly been a dream come true for our operation,” says Isard. “The system packs faster, works smarter, saves labor, and eliminates common problems. It gives us the confidence to say yes to big orders and the capability to back it up. Plus it brings consistency to every bag and makes our brand look and feel like we are the major player we’ve become.” PW
