Awesome Fast Food Packaging That Cuts Waste and Grows Waists

Seul Bi Kim developed the "Togo Package," a fast food concept that serves up a perfect pairing of origami and obesity.
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Using basic materials and clever paper engineering, this package makes fast food even faster.Photo: Seul Bi Kim

One frosty night last February, designer Seul Bi Kim was walking home from McDonald's with one hand frozen from holding her oversized soda and the and the other clutching a burger and fries that were getting soggier by the second. At home, most customers would have made do with the mushy meal that resulted, but Kim, a graduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design, decided to put her skills to work on behalf of high-calorie connoisseurs the world over. Two weeks later she had developed the "Togo Package," a fast food concept that serves up a perfect pairing of origami and obesity.

Togo transforms a single sheet of paperboard into a hyper-efficient purse for your meal. The base element is card stock carrier that has a large circular cutout in the center to hold a drink and a smaller one offset to store a straw. On the left is what can best be described as a burger holster, and the opposite side features a v-shaped cut that acts a hook and mates with french fry packaging to keep it in place. The two sides fold up and a cleverly engineered closure mechanism creates a convenient handle.

>On the left is what can best be described as a burger holster.

Kim approached the design process the way Taco Bell develops its menu—by slightly rearranging a few basic ingredients. Togo uses the same material as traditional Happy Meal boxes, and very little of it. Adhesive is used sparingly and the entire design leverages gravity and clever hooks engineered entirely from paper for its structure. Kim consulted with a packaging manufacturer early on in the process to ensure that the design would be cost-effective at scale and she is proud that her design can be produced using common techniques. "Most people think of interaction design as a purely digital field," says Kim. "But there are so many optimizations still to be made with paper and processes."

Togo has some serious limitations it will have to overcome before it can hope to claim "billions served." The open sides expose your food to every errant sneeze on the subway. Suburban snackers will have a hard time fitting this top-heavy assembly into even the most super-sized SUV cup holders. Any menu more complex than the one at In-N-Out Burger will have a hard time conforming to the system. Fortunately, experienced fry cooks have offered sage advice on how to improve the design. For example, "I've got lots of feedback that an iced soda drink can make cardboard wet when a cup gets covered with dew," she says, "But if it has an eco-friendly coating on it, then it could be more practical." Kim has taken the feedback to heart and is hard at work refining the design, but even as it exists today, Togo would be an idea solution for locations that cater to individual diners who are on-the-go.

Some scoff at the idea of putting prodigious design talents to work in the service of fast food restaurants, but Kim disagrees. "What design should do is to enhance real life experience, no matter whether its industry is fashionable or not," she says.