Custom Packaging for AirAsia Santan’s Hotmeal and Snack Box

After our collaboration with Airasia’s Burger Box, we had the chance to work with them once more. AirAsia was building a restaurant chain, Santan’ where they serve their popular in-flight meals to customers. We worked on creating custom packaging for Santan.

Named after Malaysia’s beloved ‘coconut milk’, SANTAN is a reflection of the purity and simplicity of ASEAN flavours and ingredients. Inspired to share this love for ASEAN dishes and flavours with the world, SANTAN aims to uncover the best culinary secrets from ASEAN and bring them to you.

What started as ‘AirAsia Cafe’, simply serving sandwiches and snacks in the sky, evolved into Santan in 2015 with the vision to create a unique dining experience in the sky, serving only the best and most delicious ASEAN flavours. We’ve since served over 600 million passengers from across the world.

Santan wanted to place an order for two different custom-designed packaging structures. One of which is the Hotmeal Box, and the other is the Snack box. 

They wanted the packaging to convey an Asian feel and values. Aside from that, they had a hard time deciding on the paper to use for the packaging or whether they wanted a printed custom packaging for santan.

On top of that, Santan wanted to try and cut costs wherever they could due to high order quantity. Check out How to Cut Down Food Packaging Costs for Restaurants.

At first, we showed them the mockups for our regular lunch packaging boxes and got their feedback on them. We made adjustments to the structure based on their input, including measurements of sizes and lock features. After that, we sent clients mockups for different structures and listened to their opinions and thoughts.

We decided to use Kraft paper for the packaging because of the food properties of Asian food. Sauces such as curry can stain the packaging and make it look less clean. The reason is that Kraft paper’s colour allows stains to look less obvious, thus making the whole packaging look nicer.

Instead of printing on the packaging itself, we decided to do printed sleeves as the colors look more stark this way.

With more information and feedback from Santan, they would like the packaging to be user-friendly and even better leak-proof structure. They also requested to work around the structure again to reduce the pricing if possible.

We adjusted their packaging structure with newly added features such as the faster locking system with the curved-perforated flap at the sides. The flaps reduced the chance of possible leakage as it is on top of the cover, securing it better.

The size was also optimized as there were comments that the food might look too little when the packaging looks too big.

One of the challenges that we had faced was how tough it was to decide on one size. There was a lot of changes in the ideal size because we needed to avoid the food from looking too less in the packaging. 

If the size were to be too big, then it could make customers reluctant to order from them. Similarly, if the size is too small, it might make cause leakage problems to occur more often due to lack of space for liquid to move around in the packaging. 

Aside from that, the optimization of size is also made due to the need to minimize and negotiate the price.

AirAsia was satisfied with our service and the final packaging structure of the paper. They opened their first Santan branch on December 2, 2020, at Mid Valley. 

They are currently using our packaging solutions for their takeaway packaging.

Whether you're serving in cafés, kiosks, restaurants, or on the go, your packaging matters. 

At Foodabox, we help F&B brands stand out with functional, food-safe, and beautifully branded paper packaging that delights customers and builds trust.

 Let’s create packaging that works as hard as your kitchen. Contact us today!

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