People order pizza for convenience. There’s nothing quite as good as making your own at home, but it’s often a lot easier to order pizza from a local pizzeria—especially one that uses fresh ingredients and authentic preparation methods! To make sure that pizza tastes as good at home as it does fresh-from-the-oven, pizzerias need to invest in quality delivery bags.
A premium delivery bag ensures that the pizza coming out of an oven tastes just as good by the time it reaches the customer’s doorstep. To do that, it needs to retain heat and ensure the integrity of the pie. Accomplishing these two important feats means the pizza delivery bag in question needs to live up to the task.
Here’s a look at the seven most important features to look for in a world-class pizza delivery bag—and why they matter when it comes to enjoying a delicious pie at home.
1. Six-Sided Thermal Insulation
No one wants a pizza delivered cold. Unfortunately, without a well-constructed delivery bag to keep it warm, a fresh-from-the-oven pizza will quickly fall to room temperature. Deliveries can often take up to half an hour (or even longer), which is plenty of time for a pizza to lose most of its heat.
Investing in delivery bags with six-sided thermal insulation ensures delivery customers always get a pizza that feels like it’s fresh from the oven. With insulation on all sides, there’s nowhere for the heat to escape to, which means it’ll continue circulating inside the bag, cooking the pizza for the duration of the delivery. When it gets to a customer, it’ll still feel, smell and taste like it’s fresh out of the oven.
2. Stain-Resistant Vinyl Material
Having pizzas arrive in a tomato sauce-stained bag isn’t a good look. However, stains are hard to avoid in a restaurant setting. That’s why it’s best to invest in delivery bags made with an exterior stain-resistant vinyl material. Vinyl is easy to clean and extremely durable—which also means pizzerias won’t need to worry about rain, snow and other bad weather affecting the food.
There’s a lot that can happen to a pizza after leaving the restaurant. For customers, stained pizza bags might not give them a lot of confidence about the pie a delivery driver is handing over to them. On the flip side, a clean, secure, unmarred bag says good things about the pizza inside: namely that it’s in good condition, handled with care.
3. Double-Stitched Seams
Delivery bags can experience a lot of wear and tear over time. Not only do they have to constantly hold the weight of multiple pizzas, they can get stuck in doors and caught on handles. Inferior bags may tear after a few uses due to poor seams. Bags with double-stitched seams, on the other hand, won’t need constant replacing.
Double-stitched seams are a mark of quality when it comes to durable fabric construction. And while a quality bag is likely to cost more upfront, they have the potential to save a pizzeria money because they’re made to last.
4. Structured Shell Construction
Bags with structured shell construction allow for deliveries of all sizes. They keep pizzas safe and snug while traveling from Point A to Point B, which prevents toppings from sliding all over the place. Structured pizza delivery bags—as opposed to flimsy bags—ensure customers get a good-looking pizza every time: one that survived the delivery from door-to-door without getting knocked around and jostled.
There’s also an economical benefit to structured pizza bags. Bulky delivery bags can take up a lot of space in a kitchen. Bags with structured shell construction, however, are collapsible. After finishing deliveries for the night, simply flatten these bags and place them out of the way. It’s a smart way to save precious room in a pizzeria kitchen: space better-used for fresh ingredients, cooking utensils and other kitchen essentials.
5. Velcro Strip Clasps
Good Velcro strip clasps are essential in securing pizzas during delivery. There are many opportunities for a pizza to fall out of a delivery bag after leaving the restaurant, from an inattentive driver to a freak accident. Strong Velcro strip clasps help ensure pizzas stay safely inside the bag during transport, until the driver is ready to hand over the pie.
Here again, look for stitching as a mark of quality. Velcro strips on poorly-made bags may start to peel after a few uses. Instead of having to constantly re-glue Velcro strip clasps, invest in well-made bags that have them securely stitched in place. The security of your pizzas may depend on it!
6. Inward-Folding Enclosure
Removing pizzas from bags can be awkward. Delivery drivers have to hold the pizzas in one hand while opening the bag with the other. Zippers only make this more complicated, and they can be hard to use one-handed. Plus, zippers can get stuck or even break off the delivery bag after a few uses.
It’s better to invest in bags with inward-folding enclosures, as opposed to zippers. These types of enclosures make it easy to remove pizzas without accidentally dropping them. Bags with inward-folding enclosures also keep pizzas safe and contribute to the insulative properties of the bag, since they don’t result in seams.
Inward-folding enclosures also minimize steam, allowing moisture to escape to prevent a soggy pizza. Investing in bags with inward-folding enclosures helps ensure pizza crusts remain crispy and delicious.
7. Durable Straps and Handles
The straps and handles on inferior bags can quickly tear after a few uses—especially if you’re delivering dozens of pizzas daily. This isn’t something any delivery driver wants to happen when they’re walking up to a customer’s door! A surefire way to ruin a customer’s experience is by dropping their pizza during delivery, which is why it’s essential to get bags featuring durable straps and handles. There’s no substitute for a sure-grip when lugging a pizza bag from store, to car, to customer.
The Delivery Bag Makes the Delivery
Looking for a pizza delivery bag that checks all the boxes? IncredibleBags live up to the name! They’re specifically constructed with pizza quality in mind, which means heat retention and pizza integrity are the top priority. There’s nothing quite as good as a pizza made by hand, in your home, but a premium-quality delivery bag can replicate the experience of a traditional pie made fresh at your local pizzeria.