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Pizza Solutions - Boxes

Originally all pizza boxes were square. Around 1988, a curious thing happened — the first non-square pizza carton hit the market.

The eight-sided box dubbed “octabox,” was picked up by Domino's Pizza and used by the chain until about 1996, when it was dropped for a D-style hexagon carton.

Which is best — square or non-square? The answer isn't so simple, because square boxes vary as much as non-square boxes.

Square/Non-Square

Folding/Non-Folding

B-Flute/E-Flute 

Pizza Solutions Home


Square vs. Non-Square

Advantages of square boxes:

• A square shape is what people traditionally associate with a pizza box.

 Provides a maximum of cover area, which affords the most surface area for printing.

• Four open corner spaces for holding extra items like sauce cups, garnishes etc.


Drawbacks of square boxes:

• Four open corner spaces allow pizza-sliding, or slice separation, during delivery. 
However, there are ways of reducing pizza sliding in a square box, such as by incorporating anti-slide cover flaps into a carton.

• Contains a maximum amount of air space, which tends to promote heat loss.


Advantages of non-square boxes:

•  It is “new and different.” It's also a way of clearly differentiating your carton from that of the competition.

 Accommodates creative cover shapes and opens the door to high-impact box structures.

• Due to the diagonal panels, a non-square box reduces pizza sliding, or slice separation.

• Has less air space, which promotes heat conservation.


Drawbacks of non-square boxes:

 In certain design configurations they can project an unconventional image, which might not correlate with the desired image of a pizza company.

 The covers of non-square boxes tend to have slightly less surface area for printing.

• Diminished corner space for packing extra items. However, with creative design, all three of these drawbacks can be reduced and even eliminated.


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B-flute vs. E-flute

Corrugated board can be produced in various thicknesses or heights. This is accomplished by shaping the inner paper of the board into any of several flute heights during the production process. The higher the flute, the thicker the corrugated board.

To designate the various flute heights, the corrugated paperboard industry applies letters and has derived designations such as A-flute, B-flute, C-flute, E-flute and so on.


Most corrugated pizza cartons come in either B-flute or E-flute board. B-flute board is about 1/8-inch thick, E-flute is about 1/16-inch thick.

Some operators assume that B-flute comes with heavier paper, but that's not necessarily so. The flute size has nothing to do with paper thickness, or weight.


Advantages of B-flute:

• It warps less from pizza steam than E-flute.

• Some operators believe that the thicker board connotes higher quality.

Advantages of E-flute:

• Saves almost 50 % in box blank storage space over B-flute and it tends yield a higher print quality. 

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Folding vs. Non-Folding

Regarding paper packaging for pizza, cartons can be further classified  into two types.


Folding:

Requires folding or set-up. Typically called folder or folding cartons.
Advantages of folder cartons:

• Substantially less costly than clamshells.

• Tend to be sturdier and have greater crush-resistance than clamshells.

• Can be set up on their side (such as above a cut-table).


Non-folding:

Typically called clamshells.
Advantages of clamshell cartons:

• They don't require in-store folding time.

 They consume less storage space than stacks of pre-folded boxes.

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