Flying Pig Bacon

Problem Statement

Bacon is a beloved American breakfast food; unfortunately the process of purchasing, handling, portion control, and cooking is messy and fraught with contamination issues. Furthermore modern consumers demand packaging that is functional, clean, and environmentally friendly. Currently the plastic wrapped coated paper that lacks portion control and resalable features falls short in every category.

Mission Statement

“To save bacon from its lowly and wasteful commodity packaging and elevate the cured cut to its rightful place as the king of pop culture meats.”

Bacon is a commodity item that has found resurgence in America. YouTube sensation Epic Meal Time loves bacon and wear shirts that simply proclaim “Bacon strips &, Bacon strips, & Bacon strips”, Comedian Jim Gaffigan has produced a 10 minute standup bit hailing bacons flavor and celebrity chef Michael Symon and Anthony Bourdain continually expound bacons ethereal qualities. The objective of this project is to save bacon form itself.

Packaging Design

“Flying Pig Bacon” is a packaging design that incorporates three categories of improvement: innovative functionality for the consumer, functionality for the brand, and sustainability.

Consumer Functionality

“Flying Pig Bacon” provides an improved consumer experience by rolling the bacon into a wheel. This innovative rolled bacon provides an easy means of dispensing, as each piece uses its own fat to maintain a loose connectivity to the following piece. As a result this packaging provides piece by piece dispensing ability unseen in current packaging. The rolled design allows the consumer to have portion control over their bacon usage.
The square paperboard case provides re-sealability that can be paired with an oxygen scavenger to “save the bacon” for another weekends breakfast in bed.
Finally this new packaging is easily stacked or stored in a refrigerator door in a clean manor that does not drip on food below.

Brand Functionality

The primary advantage of the new square packaging is that it presents a cohesive brand image that is easily seen by consumer and provides a bold statement on the shelf. Consumers rarely want to wallow through greasy packaging to find the apple wood or the peppered SKU. Square packaging presents a clean and uncluttered presentation in the meat case.

Secondly the company will benefit form increased product density, better packaging efficiency and truck efficiency. In the long run these savings mean better cube efficiencies in refers trucks, less trucks on the road and significant savings on a yearly basis. Finally the simple over lap of cut and familiar FEFCO standard box show that machinery is available to attain high line efficiency with available market equipment at a resalable capital expenditure.

Sustainability

Brown paperboard exterior and PE coated SBS interior provide an improvement in sustainability without the fear of “green washing”. More importantly this package fits the same 12 slices of bacon in a small and compact format. “Small” is incredibly important to sustainably minded consumers in a word in a world full of “McMansions” and gaudy fast food excess. As mentioned above truck efficiency, packaging efficiency and lack of plastic provide a product that consumers will embrace and love taking bacon through the barriers of inefficiently that even its beloved cult status have yet to tear down.