Thursday, July 28th, 2011
Today I received tons of container samples from a container supplier. He was even nice enough to deliver them to me in person. Supplier Dude said it was a first time customer service thing. Thank you Supplier Dude! I'm glad I didn't have to drive over a bridge to pick them up. Now, how do you go about choosing a container for your food? There's the all important price of course but there's so much more than that. You want the container to showcase the food in the best possible way. It should fit so that there isn't too much space left over that it looks like you're skimping. You also don't want to pack it in so tight that you can't mix the ingredients because hiyashi chuka (cold ramen noodle salad) is a mixing type of dish. Decision, decisions. Ohhh and don't get me started on all of the rules that San Francisco has on the type of plastic that you can use. Who doesn't accept #1? I think it's all just a ploy to get the good plastic so that they can sell it and make money off of it.
Let me refocus on the task at hand, which is choosing the right container. The most logical first step would be to cook a single serving of the hiyashi chuka and arrange it into the containers and see how it looks. Unfortunately, this would require going to the Japanese grocery store but that would require bridge crossing or lots of driving and their just ain't time for that. Also, I did this test previously with a sample that I got from another supplier. I promised Supplier Dude that I would contact him tomorrow with my order. Therefore, this will have to be a quick albeit a well thought out decision.
Mi's Method for Choosing a Container for a Food Fair
- Price (sort by the cheapest containers)
- Choose appropriate size among cheapest containers
- Make sure that they are in compliance with your city's regulations. This is important for food fairs. (You should ask the supplier this before you order samples)
- You may want to make sure that if you prepackage the food that all the containers will fit into cold/hot boxes for delivery. (This could be time consuming because you'll have to measure volume.)
- Looks. I mulled over white vs. black and I decided on black because the sauce is going to have a lot of soy sauce and soy sauce against white isn't going to look so nice. I also think black is appropriate for bento and I've never seen hiyashi chuka served in a white container. As far as the material goes, people should be ok with it as long as it's not styrofoam. (Bay Area peeps hate Styrofoam so this may just be a geographic thing.)
- If you have the time, I would also do a test sample of the food and put it in to see what it looks like. I did this with a similar bowl from another supplier so I already had a good idea but if it's your first time, you might want to do this step.
Containers Galore
"Look at this stuff, isn't it neat? Wouldn't you say my collection's complete? Wouldn't you say I'm the girl, the girl who has everything!"
What can I say, it just popped into my head.
Mi-
