For Soylent's new bottles, the fledgling meal replacement company shifted from its familiar, somewhat idiosyncratic bottle design. While the first edition of Soylent's pre-bottled meal replacement beverage came in a cylindrical bottle with a tapered lower half and an artful foot at the bottom, like a punctuating serif, the new bottles take a more common form known in the packaging industry as sqround.
Soylent's new bottles are known as sqround because they're a combination of square and round bottles. With the company's original, entirely round bottles, the product would often get damaged during shipping, because round the bottles would touch each other at four pressure points. With the sqround shape, bottles make contact across a wider surface area, reducing pressure and ensuring the bottles stay intact. Meanwhile, the rounded edges ensure that Soylent's new bottles don't catch while making turns through the manufacturing facility.
What's Driving This Trend
- Sustainable Packaging
- The shift from cylindrical to sqround bottles shows a trend towards more sustainable packaging solutions.
- Efficient Shipping
- The use of sqround bottles reduces damage during shipping, highlighting an emerging trend in efficient packaging design.
- Streamlined Manufacturing
- The rounded edges of Soylent's new bottles contribute to a trend of streamlined manufacturing processes in the beverage industry.
Who This Affects Most
- Food and Beverage
- The redesign of Soylent's bottles showcases how innovation in packaging can disrupt the food and beverage industry.
- Packaging
- The sqround bottle design presents an opportunity for disruptive innovation in the packaging industry, focusing on shape optimization for product protection.
- Logistics and Shipping
- The adoption of sqround bottles by Soylent highlights the potential for disruptive innovation in logistics and shipping, specifically in reducing product damage and optimizing space utilization.
