How to surprise your guests with food and experience boxes

Often, the experience of the restaurant is lost when the food is delivered in a plain cardboard box and cheap, thin plastic containers. The ingredients look as limp as if they have been in the sauna too long, the walk over the cobblestones has bowled everything around unappetisingly. The food should appeal to the eye – and all the other senses. Not every plate dish is suitable as a delivery dish.

Many restaurateurs therefore offer “food boxes” that contain a mixture of already cooked and raw ingredients. The target group is amateur chefs and guests who like to sear a piece of meat in high quality “à point”. The advantage of the food boxes is that you can pack not only a single dish but also a menu in the boxes and win the favour of your guests with a “greeting from the kitchen” or a surprise dessert. You could sell the food boxes online with our DISH tool DISH Professional Order.

Another development in food boxes is the packaging of vacuum-packed or flash-frozen freshly prepared dishes that still contain all the vitamins. This has the advantage that your guests can put the bag in hot water and don’t even have to clean the pot. Not everyone has a vacuum device or a blast freezer, but the Covid era has shown that it pays to invest in modern production and packaging techniques in order to remain future-proof.

The “Experience Box” for special moments

The trend towards “experience boxes” is currently making waves in the gastronomy sector. With the experience boxes, you bring your restaurant, your personal style to your guests in the dining room or kitchen. The highlight of the boxes is that they not only contain a fried fish, a few potatoes and peas, but also the decoration.

For example, a fine tablecloth, a jar of fresh flowers and even fine tableware can be included. The Experience Box is the surprise egg for adults: something to eat, something to play with and a surprise! If you open yourself to this idea and strike a chord with your guests, you can give free rein to your creativity and offer a special box for every theme and occasion. Even after the lockdown, these boxes are worthwhile as additional business.

The value of an “Experience Box”

And because such an experience box usually comes in high-quality packaging (usually made of wood), the guests also pay decent prices for it. An example: You provide an experience box for a football buddy evening. It contains drinks, dishes and a few special snacks.

Such an experience box is also worthwhile for you: the value of goods of the buddy sample box is about 12 euros per person and you sell the box via DISH Professional Order for 79 euros.  You can once in a while treat yourself to that for a Champions League evening. Your contribution margin 1 is 31 Euros. Assuming you don’t charge a delivery fee, you’ll lose another six euros for the delivery. Your contribution margin for the box is still 25 euros. With individual dishes or pizzas, this is only earned with several deliveries.