Here's a Mumbai businessman who dared to think within the box! Vinay Mehta has revolutionized the way hot take-out food will reach you. His solution: making sure the packaging has proper ventilation.
Tired of having too many soggy pizzas delivered to him, Vinay decided to do something about it. In 2006, with a pen knife, some cardboard and a long drive between Mumbai and Pune, he designed VENTiT, which has been judged as the world’s best pizza box. This concept has been the winner of India Star, Asia Star and World Star packaging awards.
Mehta’s container was accorded this honor recently by Scott Wiener, the New York-based pizza aficionado and author of a book called Viva La Pizza! The Art of the Pizza Box. Wiener should know. He has collected approximately 650 boxes from around the world since 2009 and is the Guinness World Record holder in this category. He said that of all the boxes he has seen, Mehta’s design is best suited to delivering steaming pizzas. “It’s smart because it doesn’t add any hardware, just rethinks the common construction of a box and rearranges it,” says Wiener.
The biggest challenge faced by take-out restaurants, experts say, is the poor ventilation of the packaging. Trapped steam condenses on the food, making it unappealing and dampening its aroma. Mehta was well placed to solve this problem. He has been dealing with corrugated cardboard boxes for 35 years. He owns a firm called Reproscan, which offers printing services to packaging firms, as also the advertising and publishing sector.
He realized that most pizza boxes are ineffective because they have holes on the side to release steam—but the heat is actually released from the top and bottom of the pies. 'The problem with the existing design is the lack of ventilation — steam generated in the box is trapped inside and condenses on the pizza, and compromising the freshness.” But what about the holes often found on one side of the box? ''They are useless, actually. The heat which renders home-delivered pizzas soggy and tasteless is released from the top and the bottom of the pizza, not the sides. The heat released from the crust, for instance, remains trapped,” says Mehta.
Mehta’s solution is simple. Cardboard, he explained consists of three layers: two flat surfaces and one ridged corrugated sheet in between. VENTiT boxes have holes in the two flat surfaces, but not in the middle layer. This permits steam to travel through the grooves in the middle corrugated layer, without getting trapped inside the box. More importantly, no additional material is required to manufacture the box.
To illustrate his point, Mehta inserts incense sticks inside VENTiT and another pizza box. In spite of the holes at the side, steam does escape through the regular pizza box, but when we turn to Mehta's box, we see spirals of smoke coming through. ''It isn't rocket science — any homemaker will tell you — you never seal chapattis immediately after they come off the gas. You wait for the heat to escape for it to stay fresh.”
“It’s the biggest challenge of pizza box designers to create something that retains heat without trapping steam while still staying inexpensive and I think this box has achieved just that!” said Wiener.
Here’s what the box promises to do:
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Mehta points to the smoke escaping his box and smiles. This delivery box design is not limited to pizza boxes alone — Mehta has created similar packaging for parathas, frankies and Indian dishes delivered in those tubs by restaurants.
Mehta's boxes are supplied across India and Dubai today (40 pizza brands use his boxes in Mumbai alone). Smokin' Joe's, Pizza Metro Pizza and Francesco's Pizzeria use VENTiT, too.
Mehta is planning to tie up with international partners to produce and distribute VENTiT boxes all over the world. It took him five years to obtain an initial patent and he started selling the box only in 2011. He now has patents in over 100 countries.