Established in 1947, Golden State Foods (GSF) is one of the largest diversified suppliers in the food service industry. Headquartered in Irvine, California, the global company has more than 50 locations on five continents and services over 125,000 restaurants in 40 countries. It produces and distributes liquid products, proteins, produce, and dairy to leading restaurant brands around the world.

GSF’s Creed and Values are at the very heart of the business. According to Brian Dick, Chief Operating Officer at GSF, “If you spend a day at Golden State Foods, you'll not only see those things, but you'll hear the words, you'll see the behaviors where it's really what I call our company's promise, and it's our job to keep that promise.”

Challenge

Sealed Air and GSF first partnered more than three decades ago on form-fill-seal films for liquid products. Since then, the two companies have developed a relationship founded on trust and respect.

Sealed Air approached GSF and one of its flagship fast-food customers with an innovative solution for condiment and sauce dispensing. At the time, the fast-food chain used rigid containers, which were expensive and proved to be bulky in back-of-house storage, inefficient to ship, and created operational challenges.

As a global fast-food chain, the iconic brand aims to provide each customer with a consistent experience, regardless of the restaurant location. The quick-service restaurant requires portion control and efficient use of limited back-of-house space — something rigid containers couldn’t provide.

Solution

Sealed Air, GSF, and the iconic fast-food chain worked hand-in-hand to develop an innovative solution for back-of-house condiment dispensing. After careful testing, iteration, and a partnership with Franke Foodservice Systems, the award-winning solution became mainstream in 2021.

CRYOVAC^® brand FlexPrep^® portion-dispensing pouches are formed and filled using Sealed Air's unique equipment at GSF facilities in the U.S. Golden State Foods then distributes the final package to its customer’s locations where back-of-house employees use the pouches, paired with a custom dispensing unit, to provide portion-controlled consistency for each meal.

Results

Today, GSF packages more than 250,000 pounds of sauce per day using just three CRYOVAC^® brand FlexPrep^® portion-dispensing systems with plans to install additional systems. After moving from the prior rigid format to CRYOVAC^®brand FlexPrep^®portion-dispensing systems, GSF has benefited from:

Decreased equipment footprint created valuable floor space
Reduced labor requirements with single-operator functionality
Decreased shipping costs from lower material weight

The iconic fast-food chain has been very pleased with the switch to CRYOVAC^® brand FlexPrep^® portion-dispensing pouches because of the demonstrated value from:

Increased sustainability
Higher product yield
More efficient use of back-of-house storage
Increased optimization for back-of-house operations

“As COVID has taught us, there are many things that we cannot anticipate. But when you've got partners that share openly with you and work very collaboratively with you, there's very few problems that you can't solve.”

- Brian Dick, Corporate Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Golden State Foods