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Food marketers focus on schools

New packaging equipment is helping two California food processors grow their school foodservice businesses.

At Southland Bagel, preglued sleeves are erected and placed in a flighted conveyor (left) so operators can slide pizza bagels in
At Southland Bagel, preglued sleeves are erected and placed in a flighted conveyor (left) so operators can slide pizza bagels in

Two California food processors focusing on school foodservice accounts got an A+ in automation recently by installing packaging equipment that helps them expand their businesses.

At Southland Bagel in Carson, CA, the equipment addition was an automatic sleever from Adco (Turlock, CA). The sleever is a key component in a promising contract manufacturing relationship that Southland has formed with Cincinnati-based CCF Brands. That firm is licensed to market pizza bagels under the well-known Chuck E. Cheese® restaurant brand owned by CEC Entertainment of Irving, TX. Southland makes the pizza bagels that CCF is licensed to sell under the Chuck E. Cheese brand, and CCF specified that it wanted the product to be packaged in an attention-grabbing paperboard sleeve. Southland installed the Adco sleever when it began manufacturing Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Buddy bagels in two sizes and two flavors early this year.

Sold through brokers, the frozen pizza bagels are shipped to distributors and then to school cafeterias, where kitchen personnel simply pop the ovenable containers into a conventional oven. When cooking is done, the product is served right in its sleeve.

“It’s unique in school foodservice,” says Southland vice president of sales and marketing Karen Peterson.

Packaging for other school lunch pizzas shows why the Chuck E. Cheese offering is so unique. Far more typical is a round or rectangular pizza wrapped in flexible film. While this is certainly more economical, it means cafeteria personnel must spend time removing the wrapper. Also, compared with the Chuck E. Cheese sleeve, it leaves little opportunity for promoting a brand.

Another option, and one that does have some potential for creating brand awareness, is to have cafeteria personnel bake a 14” round pizza, and slice it into six pieces, then serve it on grease-resistant paper sheets printed with whatever logo and brand information the pizza marketer wants. But here again, the amount of in-school handling required makes this cumbersome. The sleeve, says Peterson, is much more efficient.

“With this package, the kitchen operators have nothing to unwrap or cut,” says Peterson. “They cook the pizza bagel in the package and then serve it as is with no extra steps.”

Even more important than convenience is the brand reinforcement created by the paperboard sleeve. “CCF Brands didn’t choose the cheapest, but they did choose the most impressive method of presentation to get their name out there in the most visible way,” says Peterson. “I think they chose correctly.”

Research came first

According to Southland president Steve Brody, the Adco sleever was selected only after considerable research. One concern was that if the Chuck E. Cheese concept proved unpopular in the schools, Southland would be stuck with a machine for which it had no use.

“When I explained my concern to some machinery manufacturers, they told me ‘Sorry, the risk is yours,’” Brody recalls. “But Adco bought into the project right along with us. They put together a lease/purchase plan that allowed us to install the new equipment and get real product out into the marketplace while still spreading some of the risk around in case things didn’t go well.”

As it turned out, things did go well. That was clear in about six months, says Brody. Still, it was nice to know the machine could be shipped back had it been necessary, he adds.

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