Granola Producer Closes In On Re-sealable Packaging

By Isaac Fletcher, contributing writer, Food Online

Gypsy Crunch seeks an innovative solution to their packaging needs and finds the answer through an outside packaging designer and partnership with Velcro

Gypsy Crunch, a producer of all-natural, gluten free granola, has found an eco-friendly, re-sealable packaging solution that extends the shelf life of their granola products by up to 10 weeks. The company, which started in 2010, decided to accommodate the extra demand for their product and up their scale of production. During this time, Gypsy Crunch founders searched for an accredited lab to provide nutritional decks for the granola product and were referred to the Food Innovation Center located at Oregon State University.

The Food Innovation Center offers shelf-life studies, product development, and packaging engineering among other services. While working with the center, they realized that it was time for Gypsy Crunch’s packaging to reflect the product and company message of sustainability and healthiness.

The company wants packaging that would address their customers’ desires for extended shelf life and ease of opening and resealing while still upholding values of being non-wasteful and eco-friendly. Other customer attributes are important to the designing process as well. With many Gypsy Crunch consumers being children and the elderly, the company wants to provide a product that is not only easy to open, but easy to reseal as well, reducing food waste and keeping the granola fresh longer. By nature, granola tends to easily absorb moisture, so having packaging that can be easily sealed again after opening is of paramount importance to keep the product fresh and reduce exposure to airborne elements.

The solution for the company’s packaging needs comes not from within the company, but from external contract packaging. Gypsy Crunch has teamed up with packaging designer Anton Kimball — who is responsible for the brand logo and five-sided pouch — and partnered with Velcro Industries to place a velcro seal on the pouch. The velcro addresses one of the major desires Gypsy Crunch had in mind when it comes to the packaging for their product and provides a consumer friendly solution for re-sealability.

As sustainability, reduction of waste, and providing a consumer friendly experience continue to become ever more important for food producers, more companies will likely continue or begin to seek packaging solutions similar to that of Gypsy Crunch. By engineering their packaging to be user- and eco-friendly, Gypsy crunch has differentiated their granola product even more from the competition, providing the competitive edge necessary for small scale food producers to stay in business. As with many popular innovations that come from smaller producers, we will likely see bigger name brands attempt better re-sealability in the future.