Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

SavrPak

Tired of Cold Take Out? SavrPak Believes It Has The Answer With New Packaging Prototype

Although everyone seems divided in these tumultuous times, there are still a few things in this world we all can agree on: Jeopardy won’t be as good without Alex Trebek, Facebook is evil, and cold food sucks.

While we can’t do too much about the first two, the final one might be a solvable problem, at least according to SavrPak. That’s because the company has debuted a new delivery packaging prototype that it claims will keep food at a safe temperature.

This is important because once food drops below 140o F, bacteria forms on the food’s surface. Unfortunately, that doesn’t take long for food packaged up in the typical foam or molded pulp packaging.

According to SavrPak, the company’s new packaging prototype can keep food at 140o or above for more than 20 minutes. While the typical wait for food ordered via a delivery service like DoorDash is about 40 minutes, a good chunk of that time is waiting in the prep queue and the actual making of the food, and 20 minute time window is about the average time it takes for a food package to arrive at the customer’s door once it’s picked up by the delivery driver.

And not only is hot food safer, but it also tastes better. And while there have been research projects on everything from using exhaust fumes of delivery vehicles to using inductive heating and chemicals as ways to keep food warm in transit, the beauty of SavrPak’s approach is its simplicity. SavrPak new prototype uses a small plant-based patch that is placed in the food packaging that extracts moisture and keeps the food warm. The packaging is insulated, and the combined impact is warmer (and less soggy food).

The soggy-free food part is no surprise for those familiar with SavrPak’s history. The company was originally called Soggy Food Sucks after Bill Birgen developed a patch to keep the lunches he made to take to work at his day job as an aerospace engineer from getting soggy. After patenting the technology and debuting it at The Smart Kitchen Summit’s Startup Showcase in 2018, companies from around the world began to contact Birgen. Last year, the company rebranded to SavrPak, and Mark Cuban even decided to invest after co-CEO Greg Maselli sent him a cold email.

I asked Birgen how it feels to create successor technologies and see the company grow beyond that original concept he came up with for your work lunch?

“It’s been incredible to see SAVRpak resonate with people and businesses around the world,” said Birgen. “I’m most energized about our plans to help the food industry be more sustainable. We see huge potential in SAVRpak’s ability to extend the shelf life of produce and reduce food waste.”

According to company co-CEO Grant Stafford, the company’s new packaging prototype is being trialed by Kitchen United and a variety of QSRs, and he expects the product to roll out in both the US and Mexico this quarter.

After Cold Email Pitch, Mark Cuban Invests in SAVRpak (Formerly Soggy Food Sucks)

Perhaps the old addage “It never hurts to ask” has never been more true than in the case of SAVRpak. The company announced today that it has closed a $3.5 million Series A round of funding led by famed investor Mark Cuban. How did Cuban get involved? SAVRpak’s co-founder and co-CEO Greg Maselli skipped the Shark Tank and sent Cuban a cold email directly.

We don’t know what magical combination of words Maselli used to sway Cuban (presumably it did not involve NFTs or Dogecoin), but SAVRpak is actually a pretty good pitch in and of itself. The company produces special patches made from paper and a plant-pup-based solution that are affixed inside food takeout containers. Using the principles of thermodynamics, the patches absorb moisture to keep delivery food crisp and fresh (no soggy fries). The patch does not use chemicals and will receive its biodegradable certification later this year. 

We hate to brag, but we knew SAVRpak was cool way before Cuban. The company used to be known as Soggy Food Sucks, and it won the Startup Showcase at our 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit. The company changed its name to SAVRpak in September of last year when it realized that family-friendly brands didn’t necessarily want to do business with any company with “Sucks” in their name.

When we spoke to SAVRpak last September, company co-founder, Bill Birgen said that COVID-19 had been a double-edged sword for his company. On the one hand, with restaurant dining rooms shut down, delivery and takeout were bigger than ever. But at the same time, restaurants hanging on by a thread were reluctant to add another item to their expense sheet.

In September, SAVRpak was producing 1 million units per month and had plans to scale production up to 15 million units per month by the end of the year. With this new funding, SAVRpak said it will expand production capacity by up to 50 million units a month, and advance applications in the agriculture, grocery, and consumer markets.

It was actually a Mark Cuban-heavy weekend for Spoon-related companies. In addition to SAVRpak, home beer brewing appliance startup, BEERMKR, appeared on Shark Tank last Friday. But while the cold email from SAVRpak resulted in an investment from Cuban, BEERMKR’s pitch got the cold shoulder from Cuban (though to be fair, BEERMKR taped that episode back in September, before the wider shipments of its devices).

Soggy Food Sucks Re-Brands as SavrPak, Starts Scaling Up

When Soggy Food Sucks won the Startup Showcase at our 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit, you could kinda tell that its moniker wasn’t long for this world. Like the name of some local indie band, Soggy Food Sucks caught your attention and told you exactly what it does, but didn’t exactly scream big enterprise business.

Well today, the company announced a re-branding. Soggy Food Sucks is now the much more professional sounding SavrPak.

“I named the company myself, when it was just me,” Bill Birgen, Founder of Soggy Food Sucks SavrPak told me by phone this week. But the name became a potential issue when talking with prospective high-profile, family-friendly brands who were hesitant about partnering with anything that “sucks.”

For those unfamiliar with the company, SavrPak makes a patch that sticks to the inside of food containers and absorbs moisture. The result, the company promises is, well, no more soggy food when you order delivery.

Birgen said that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a bit of a double-edge sword for the company. On the one hand, delivery and off-premises eating is more important to restaurant business than ever. But on the other hand, restaurants, whose margins were already thin before the pandemic, are reluctant to add any new expenses like a patch for to-go containers.

“COVID was a curveball,” Birgen said. “Customers were ready to receive product, but it’s probably a good thing they didn’t. They may not have been around to pay us.”

According to Birgen, SavrPak is producing 1 million units per month and is scaling up to produce 15 million units per month by the end of the year. The company has a number of brands testing out its patch including Wahoo’s Fish Tacos and Kitchen United, with the latter offering SavrPak’s as a packaging add-on for brands housed in its ghost kitchens.

In addition to ramping up production, SavrPak is also developing a patch that can be dropped into products like bags of salad to help keep produce fresh. The company is also in the process of receiving compostability certification. This is a good thing, considering the incredible amount of single-use container waste being generated by the rise in take out and delivery.

SavrPak isn’t the only company tackling the issue of soggy food sucking. Packaging company Novolex makes the EcoCraft Fresh & Crispy clamshell containers that help keep food crisp through “micro-flute corrugation” built into its to-go containers.

With the pandemic still very much impacting our eating habits, off-premises isn’t going away anytime soon. That sucks for a lot of reasons, but when it comes to eating delivery at home, maybe SavrPak can make it suck less?