The French love good food, but if there is anything left over on their plates at a restaurant, they don’t normally take it home. To reduce this waste of food – which amounts to an estimated 20 kg per person per year in France – Anne Poggenpohl, a German student from the Cologne School of Design, has developed a special type of packaging for the grande nation. In fact, he decorative take-away box made such a good impression on the French National Packaging Council that it decided to bestow an award.

Enjoy more at home
The purpose of this innovative and very smart packaging is to suggest that any food chosen at the restaurant will continue to taste good at home. After over 30 prototypes Anne, who lives in Paris, was eventually satisfied. Far from being conventional doggy bags, the well-thought-out design of her boxes makes them attractive to behold and also simple and intuitive to handle. Instead of the familiar polystyrene, Anne Poggenpohl’s design is based on the idea of a gift box, so that the result looks like a valuable present. To ensure proper reheating of the leftovers, the rectangular box is sealed with a sticker containing a customised message. The high-quality finish of the recyclable plastic ensures that even gravy and dressing can be included without running the risk of leakage.

Practical and sustainable
Unpacking the food is equally intuitive and trouble-free. When the side walls of the box are opened out, they automatically form an octahedron from which the food can be moved into a saucepan or onto a plate without requiring any further tools. This applies to both box sizes, which do not exceed 20 x 30 cm when folded, thus allowing both cost-efficient storage and environment-friendly waste disposal. The packaging material itself is equally sustainable. Made entirely from recyclable plastic, the Bien Bon feels like cardboard when touched. The manufacturing process, too, was developed in close collaboration with experts from the packaging industry. The cutting of the shape takes place at the same time as the embossing of the pattern, so that the process requires a minimum amount of energy. The innovative box even has a name: C’était Bien Bon – “That was a really nice meal”.