Kind bars’ plastic packaging is iconic. Their new paper upgrade is stellar

For as much as the design industry exaggerates the narrative and drama around unboxing a product, Kind is one of the few brands in which the packaging really does serve the customer experience. Its clear window advertises the natural ingredients: nuts, chocolate, and minimal sugar. The wrapper offers literal transparency into what you’re putting into your body.

Of course we know now that plastic is as bad for our environment as it is for our biology. And Kind has spent more than two years reimagining its iconic plastic packaging as a paper wrapper that it hopes to eventually put around the hundreds of millions of bars it sells each year. Developed by Printpack, the company worked to source the right paper and fine-tune its structure—ensuring it’s both protective of food and feasible for assembly line production.

“There’s an expectation from our consumer that we are delivering sustainable solutions,” says Kerri Clark, VP of Packaging R&D at Kind. “So I think the threshold that we have to meet is a bit higher.”

Developing a better wrapper

The plastic Kind bar packages of today are technically recyclable in much of the U.S., but not through convenient curbside recycling. “We can’t get the consumer to take extra steps, to go to another place to drop things off. It’s a really big ask,” Clark says. “So the paper track is about driving circularity, and improving recycling rates on our Kind bar wrapper.”

Swapping plastic for paper isn’t so easy, though. For starters, plastic is highly durable against puncturing and creates a strong seal against the environment. Meanwhile, Kind knows its bar can have sharp edges where it’s cut, and that their product isn’t just bought and then consumed at home. People bring them along as a snack, often shoving them deep into a bag to extract it hours later.

“What we don’t want to do is solve one problem but then create another by having a product that’s not usable to the consumer and creating food waste,” Clark says.

Plastic also runs easily through high-speed assembly lines, and it has just the right permeability to protect the product from oxygen and moisture without actually requiring a vacuum seal. Nuts, in particular, will go rancid if exposed constantly to air.

 “[Plastic] has been engineered for all these years for these performance characteristics,” Clark notes. “There’s a reason a lot of food packaging is plastic.” 

The other reason, of course, is one of cost. Technically, Kind’s paper packs are more expensive for Kind to produce than plastic, which the company considers a short-term cost it will swallow rather than pass along to consumers. Kind makes clear that it holds no patents or other IP on the packaging, which they hope other companies will adopt to drive down price.

“This isn’t the paper you’re going to go buy at Office Max to put in your printer. It’s not the paper that we’re going to use for stuffing and an Amazon shipper. So part of what we need to do is to make sure that these things have a chance to be scaled,” Clark says. “It’s really shifted the thinking. I think for most big CPGs [consumer packaged goods], it used to be so much about competitive advantage and exclusivity. With sustainability, it’s the opposite again.”

Unwrapping a paper Kind bar

The solution Kind and PrintPack developed still feels like a Kind bar. But instead of revealing the nuts within through a window, the bar is printed right onto the wrapper. That wrapper feels lovely in your hands—with a heavy weight that reminds me of a fancier, hand-wrapped confectionery you might get at a fine café or bakery. The paper actually needs enough fiber inside to be a circular material, and I’d argue it feels all-around more premium as a result. (It’s actually a bit more bulky than the plastic pack, too, which leads to some interesting psychology around the portion size.)

Tear open the pack, and you’ll feel a waxy interior. This is a plastic-free, FDA-approved water-based coating that, in lieu of plastic, creates a barrier protecting the bar from the aforementioned air and water. 

To validate the packaging before launch, Kind ran a few tests. It used digital modeling to simulate the performance of the pack. It employed accelerated testing, subjecting the bars to high humidity and heat in attempts to stress the packaging to its limits fast. And the company has also simply wrapped up bars and put them into storage, and checks on them periodically to see how they’ve aged. The company also ran a direct-to-consumer (DTC) pilot project with the packs in 2023.

“We’re really taking this test-and-learn approach—where we’re going to try some things, we’re going to make sure that we’re not going to have those negative trade-offs on shelf life and product quality and the eating experience,” Clark says. “But also, does the consumer understand that it’s still a Kind bar? Do I need to literally see the product, or does [our motto of] ‘ingredients you can see and pronounce’ mean that I know what’s in this?” 

And for Kind, that question is of paramount importance, so it will be tracking sales closely to see if the new packaging impacts its shelf appeal.

For now, the new paper packs are part of a limited test that will run through October 1, launching exclusively at Whole Foods Market stores in Arizona, Southern California, Connecticut, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, and Texas. Assuming they perform well, the paper packs could make their way to all Kind bars within a few years.

View the full article