Seeking info: Final Year Project_ Take Aways?

DragonboyVNY

Hi all, I hope you are all lovers of the various flavours in the world. This is the food forum after all.

I'll introduce myself. I'm a product design student in UL, and I am doing my final year project research at the moment on take-aways. Strange yes, but it was the last of many straws after my other ideas were shot down and disliked by the high and mightiest of educators on my course (well the Big Four is what I call them).

My family runs a restaurant in town here in Limerick, a Chinese restaurant. But the two initial/main issues I want to tackle in the project are:
1) take away foods generate a lot of waste in plastic/paper/styrofoam/aluminium boxes.
2) food the gets crammed into boxes for take aways look horrible, compressed into the spaces and lose their original aesthetics when fresh off the cooker/wok/frier/steamer. Oh the many times I have brought home food and eptied it out and it still looks like a block "sandcastle".
3) taking into account of segregation... seperating foods, vegetarian dishes... sauces in food etc.

I know, the waste generated is recyclable, but I am still looking into some sort of more sustainable system... like a lunch box for the employees in a more scheduled dining environment- the work canteen of a company. Like- IF there was some way of having a take away system that excludes disposable container/mediums.

I have also considered... that if the food portions were smaller, they wouldn't be crammed into tight spaces, or to make the containers bigger...

But we don't want to make portions smaller do we? We can't turn all Chinese and other take aways into those arty Japanese Bento Boxes can we? (Sound pretty cool, but the portions would be tiny- imagine micro-sized chickenballs... and 3 spoonfuls of curry chicken).

Let me know what you think? Just don't start a rant off topic about MSG, who's curry is better, or what restaurant has the best early bird deals... Now for some bed (yes on a thursday night_fourth years are boring nowadays). I hope to hear all about it in the morn, toodles.

leiwand

sorry ,no offence but i found your post very ambiguous.your two main issues are actually three and exactly what would you like to be commented on?

WindSock

I saw this great idea, perhaps somewhere down under where they give you your food in a plastic takeaway box, and if you re-use it the food costs less. It might ne a bit inconvienient sometimes though.

DragonboyVNY

Oh yes thank for pointing that out Bruno. I thought of the third issue as I was typing. To the point, I want to reduce waste in the take away industry, preferably focusing on the restaurant industry, where people would buy take-aways for dinner.

Aside from the waste, I want to make things look nicer- when we bring the take-away home, I want them to bring the feeling of eating in a Chinese restaurant for example. There is a perceived better value in the food and tastes better because it looks nicer. If everything is jammed into boxes, they don't look nice when poured out.

Japanese dishes can do this well, but their portions are tiny.

So there are three main issues: Waste, Looks (of the food and carrier), and food segregation (to keep sauces out of each other, to keep special orders- no veg + no nuts etc. separated).

Which brings me to my next Question:

Are take-away portions too big? For the price, the portions are usually very good value for money. But can people finish them? Or do they keep leftovers for the next day? Or are thy thrown out also?

People are a bit health conscious nowadays, so maybe they don't want such large portions they can barely finish? I know I can't finish a Main Dish with a side portion of Fried Rice.

This is probably best asked in a Poll, which I will start in a new thread. Bu feel free to give your opinions. Thanks Everyone.

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RE: Windsock

That is a good idea. I was thinking maybe to tie in a service: A rental of the Food Carrier or lunch box and you get a discount next time you bring it back to the restaurant. And depending on the material it is made of, dish washing may suffice over sterilisation.

But the discount would only be for the containers in same or pristine condition. I mean, we can't take something in if it as used for plant pots or something.

Alun

You might want to look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiffin for some inspiration. It's a system in use in India for ages and seems to work well.

There seem to be some people trying to set up an equivalent, modernised version in the UK ... See http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/jan/30/foodanddrink.iainaitch for an example. One such example was featured on a Gordon Ramsey 'Kitchen ightmares' episode a while ago.

rockbeer

Alun beat me to it - Tiffin is your inspiration.

DragonboyVNY

Wow, that is exactly what the initial solution I imagined looked like. Ah well, there's always something already done.

Tiffin eh? I think it will be hard to surpass this. They even have a supplied service too. The product/service combo really puts me in a strange spot. I can work around it and improvise things for a restaurant's needs.

Thanks everyone, I will research more on the Tiffin and other potential solutions.