US20080048012A1

US20080048012A1 - Food container with obverse form and reverse form of information

Info

Publication number: US20080048012A1
Application number: US11/555,267
Authority: US
Inventors: Mei-Lin Liou
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 2006-08-28
Filing date: 2006-10-31
Publication date: 2008-02-28

Abstract

A food container provides information of food order with both obverse and reverse form on one side. A first pattern having content of food order and a third pattern having nutrition information of the food are printed on the outer part of one side of the food container in obverse form and a second pattern having content of food order is printed on the middle part of the same side of the food container in reverse form. The food container is translucent and all the patterns are visible from the other side, which provides the fast food industries an easy way to wrap and deliver the foods fast and correct.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of the filing date of U.S. provisional patent application No. 60/823,759, filed Aug. 28, 2006, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a containing material, and more specifically, to a food container with obverse type and reverse type of information.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The manufacturing process of food has been systematically developing in the fast food industries. A counter in the front stage receives an order from a customer and inputs the order into a point of service (POS) system, which sends order information to the backstage kitchen workers. The kitchen workers in the backstage then make foods according to the order from the POS system and wrap the foods in wrappers when foods are done. The wrapped foods are delivered to the counter and handed over to the customer. So, foods are generally wrapped in wrappers and have similar appearances.
Since foods are wrapped in similar (or the same) wrappers, it is not easy for fast food workers, either kitchen workers or counters, to identify the products by viewing from outside the wrappers if there is no substantial information on the wrappers. A prior art food wrapper in some fast food industries has prefabricated pattern indicating a food that should be wrapped inside. The prefabricated pattern is printed on one side of the wrapper while the other side of the wrapper, which is always the same with all sorts of wrappers, is for directly contacting and wrapping the food so that the food is not contaminated by the prefabricated pattern. The kitchen workers then pick a right wrapper according to the prefabricated pattern on the wrapper for wrapping the right food inside. But using wrappers with prefabricated pattern to wrap the foods is limited in the variety of food that can be wrapped and the efficiency of the procedure of delivering foods with wrappers can be lowered down since the wrappers are not easily identifiable from the other side that directly contacting and wrapping the food.
For another kind of wrapper in the prior art, which is plain and translucent, kitchen workers have to wrap the food in the wrapper and deliver the foods carefully in organized way. Even so, foods wrapped with the same wrappers are still highly possible to be mistakenly wrapped and delivered to a customer, which deteriorates the service quality of a fast food industry.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The claimed invention provides a food container with obverse form and reverse form of information. The food container is translucent and has a first side and a second side for containing a food. The food container comprises a first pattern printed in reverse form on the first side and a second pattern printed in obverse form on the first side, wherein the first pattern and the second pattern are visible from the second side of the food container.
These and other objectives of the present invention will no doubt become obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art after reading the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment that is illustrated in the various figures and drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is an illustration of an exemplary embodiment of a food container of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an illustration of the food container in FIG. 1 in another perspective.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The food containers in the claimed invention can be of many kinds of application, for example, a wrapper, or a box for containing various kinds of foods in food industries, especially in fast food restaurants. In the following paragraphs, the wrapper made of translucent paper is taken for description purpose.
Please refer to FIG. 1. An exemplary embodiment of a wrapper 10 is translucent and has a first side 12 and a second side 14. The wrapper 10 is square, rectangular, or of any other specific shape for a specific requirement. Since the wrapper 10 is made of paper, it can be easily folded up to wrap a food. The first side 12 of the wrapper 10 is for placing information of the content and the second side 14 of the wrapper 10 is for directly contacting and wrapping the food. On the first side 12 of the wrapper 10, two sets of patterns are printed by a printing machine that has the ability to output patterns in either obverse form or in reverse form. Therefore, the first side 12 comprises a first pattern 20 and a second pattern 30, wherein both patterns can be images, texts, or figures. The first pattern 20 is located on the outer part of the first side 12 for providing information with an already-wrapped food for the fast food workers or the customers, and the second pattern 30 is located on the middle part of the first side 12 for the kitchen workers in the backstage to wrap a food with the wrapper 10 correctly and quickly. Since the wrapper 10 is for wrapping a food, the first pattern 20 and the second pattern 30 on the first side 12 contain information of food order. The first pattern 20 contains information of food order in obverse form and the second pattern 30 contains information of food order in reverse form. Take the exemplary embodiment in FIG. 1 for example, the first pattern 20 includes text content with food title: ‘CHEESE BURGER’ in the first line and additional instructions for making the food: ‘NO ONIONS’ and ‘EXTRA KETCHUP’ in the second and third lines, while the second pattern 30 includes text content the same as the text content included in the first pattern 20, except for its reverse form. Although the second pattern 30 has the same content as the first pattern 20 does, the two patterns in the exemplary embodiment is not the only way to display information in the present invention. For a more friendly application based on the present invention, the first pattern 20 can include food order in a more customer friendly style and the second pattern 30 can include food order with more technical presentation such as some abbreviations of the food titles or symbols related to these additional food making instructions.
In the exemplary embodiment in FIG. 1, an additional third pattern 40 is also printed on the first side 12. To provide the customer with more useful information, the third pattern 40 includes nutrition information of the food inside the wrapper 10. The third pattern 40 is located on the outer part of the first side 12 and is in obverse form just as the first pattern 20 is. It is because the third pattern 40 plays a role of providing information to the customer when the food is wrapped, not to the kitchen workers when the food has not been wrapped in the wrapper 10 yet.
FIG. 2 shows an illustration of the wrapper 10 in another perspective, which is the like how a kitchen worker may see when the kitchen worker is wrapping a food in the wrapper 10. Since the wrapper 10 is translucent, the three patterns printed on the first side 12 of the wrapper 10 are visible viewing from the second side 14 of the wrapper 10. The patterns appear different from how they look like viewed from the first side 12 as in FIG. 1 instead. In FIG. 2, the first and the third patterns 20, 40 appear in reverse form and the second pattern 30 appears in obverse form. When the kitchen worker places the wrapper 10 with the second side 14 facing upward, he/she sees the second pattern 30 on the middle part of the first side 12 (the other side that faces downward at this time) of the wrapper 10 in obverse form, which provides the kitchen worker an easy way to make and place the right food with appropriate further instructions for make the food on the second side 14 of the wrapper 10. In such way, the wrapper 10 in the present invention allows the fast food industries to speed up the food making process in the backstage without losing accuracy. After the kitchen worker places the right food with appropriate further instructions for make the food on the second side 14 of the wrapper 10, he/she wraps the food in the wrapper 10 by folding the outer part of the wrapper 10 inward. When the outer part of the wrapper 10 is folded inward, the first and the third patterns 20,40 on the first side 12 of the wrapper 10 are again appearing in obverse form viewing from the already-wrapped food, which provides the workers, either the kitchen workers in the backstage and the counters, and also the customer a convenient way to recognize the food.
The food container in the present invention provides information of food order with both obverse and reverse form on one side. A first pattern having content of food order and a third pattern having nutrition information of the food are printed on the outer part of one side of the food container in obverse form and a second pattern having content of food order is printed on the middle part of the same side of the food container in reverse form. The food container is translucent and all the patterns are visible from the other side, which provides the fast food industries an easy way to wrap and deliver the foods fast and correctly.
Those skilled in the art will readily observe that numerous modifications and alterations of the device and method may be made while retaining the teachings of the invention. Accordingly, the above disclosure should be construed as limited only by the metes and bounds of the appended claims.

Claims

1. A food container with obverse form and reverse form of information, the food container being translucent and having a first side and a second side for containing a food, comprising:

a first pattern printed in reverse form on the first side; and

a second pattern printed in obverse form on the first side;

wherein the first pattern and the second pattern are visible from the second side of the food container.

2. The food container of claim 1, wherein the first pattern is on the middle part of the first side.

3. The food container of claim 1, wherein the second pattern is on the edge of the first side.

4. The food container of claim 1, wherein the first pattern is the reverse form of the second pattern.

5. The food container of claim 1, wherein the first pattern comprises a food order text.

6. The food container of claim 5, further comprising a nutrition information pattern printed on the first side, the nutrition information pattern comprising a food nutrition text corresponding to the food order text.

7. The food container of claim 1, wherein the second pattern comprises a food order text.

8. The food container of claim 7, further comprising a nutrition information pattern printed on the first side, the nutrition information pattern comprising a food nutrition text corresponding to the food order text.

9. The food container of claim 1, being a wrapper for wrapping the food with the second side contacting the food.