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News / November 10, 2026
When we think about food, we often think about what we buy in a shop and cook at home. But a large share of meals are prepared and served by someone else: in a restaurant, a hotel, a school or a hospital. This is food service, also known as HoReCa (hotels, restaurants and catering). It is a broad category, and for packaging it comes with its own set of needs.
In this article we look at who works in food service, what a normal day in a professional kitchen involves, and what that kitchen needs from the packages it uses.
Food service is usually described as five groups:
A small restaurant and a central kitchen work at very different scales. Even so, the daily work in their kitchens has a lot in common.
A professional kitchen is a place where many things happen at the same time, often in a small space. Storage rooms, fridges and work benches are shared between many products, and every shelf is in use. Space is one of the first things a kitchen plans around.
Every product that comes in also comes in a package, and the package has to go somewhere when it is empty. In a small kitchen, empty packaging needs storage space, needs to be sorted and needs to be carried out.
Then there is the product itself. Thick products such as creams, sauces and yoghurt tend to stay on the walls of rigid boxes. What is left in the package is product the kitchen has paid for but cannot use.
Time matters too. Opening, pouring, storing and throwing away packaging are small tasks, but they happen many times a day. Each one takes a little time from cooking and serving.
Finally, many products need to be warmed and kept at serving temperature. Every extra pan or utensil used for this is one more thing to wash.
From these everyday tasks, a simple list of needs follows. A package for food service should:
None of these needs is new. What changes from one kitchen to another is which of them matters most.
Our packages are designed to make everyday food service work more efficient, from storage to the last squeeze. This is what that means in practice.
Less space. When an Ecolean package is empty, it becomes thin and flat. Compared with cartons or rigid buckets, empty packaging takes up less space, is easier to handle as waste and adds less clutter to the kitchen.
More product used. Because the package is flexible, it can be emptied almost completely, also when the product is thick. In a study by STFI-Packforsk (2007), about 3% of a highly viscous product was left in an Ecolean package, against 8.7% in a one-litre gable-top carton. This makes our packages a good fit for creams, sauces, condensed and evaporated milk, yoghurt and similar products.
Open what you need. Our packages come in sizes from 125 ml to 1,000 ml, for both chilled and ambient products. With the right size, the kitchen can open the amount it needs and avoid large containers that are opened, partly used and left unfinished.
Lighter packaging. Our one-litre Ecolean Air package weighs 16.1 g. According to an internal study, it is on average 50% lighter than a carton or a plastic bottle of the same size. Less packaging material comes into the kitchen, and less goes out as waste.
Easy to handle. The package opens along a perforation, so there is no need for scissors, a lid or a utensil. The air handle and the controlled flow make it easy to pour, and the package stands up on the shelf.
Food service is a large and varied category, but the kitchens in it share the same everyday needs: space, time, as little waste as possible, and products that are easy to use. Packaging is a small part of that work, but it touches every step from storage to serving.
Do you want to know more about how we work to reduce food waste? Contact us to talk about packaging for your products.
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