Think Packaging has worked with Duck Island, a New-Zealand based ice cream cake brand, to design a box that is as cake-friendly as it is user-friendly.
The boxes transport the cakes from the factory to the shop and serve as a prelude to the tasty and beautiful treat contained within. Designed not only to be sturdy and secure for the cakes inside, but the packaging is also elegant, taking cues from the cakes themselves: the boxes are a pink frosting color with gold foil text embellishments as the icing on top, completing the pleasantly sleek design.
For a while, Duck Island’s delicious Ice Cream cakes were only available in their Hamilton East flagship store, as they didn’t have a practical, sturdy, food-safe cake box to safely transport the cakes to their scoop shops. They needed a box that could protect their beautiful cakes on the sometimes rough journey from the Hamilton factory to Auckland and Wellington. So, we were approached with a very clear brief. To create the ultimate cake box.
The box needed to be strong, with minimal movement of the cake inside, the ability to close tightly; avoiding freezer burn, and safely stack on shelves to save valuable freezer space. It also needed to be fun and easy for customers to handle, and the perfect size so they can store it easily in their freezer at home too.
Typically, cakes are loaded from the top, meaning that the edges can get easily damaged, or smudged. So from a functional point of view, we set out to design a system that was not only easy to assemble & load by the Duck Island kitchen staff, it was just as user-friendly for the customer taking the cake out and enjoying it, without dipping their fingers in.
The answer was a custom self-locking box with well-thought-through additions and design features. Once the cake is ready it’s placed onto the base tray, which is then simply slid into the box through the front pull-down panel. The side walls have built-in, angled flaps that add extra support if the cake does indeed slip a little through transit, and once closed the lid includes four recessed cut-outs giving the boxes edges to grip to, minimising the chance of twisting, and stacks nice and neatly.
To finish the box off and add a little flair, we created a device on the inside of the lid to clip a personal note or celebratory card for the customer and/or receiver. The opening and use of the cake box are then as simple as pulling the front wall down, sliding the cake out and enjoying it at the table.
