Chick-fil-A Cold&Go cup - Graphic Packaging International Chick-fil-A® strives to be seen as one of the most caring companies in the world, so consumer experience is one of its key strategic priorities. The business identified an opportunity to enhance the guest experience with its single-wall paper cups and worked with Graphic Packaging to address this need. This project started over three years ago and has evolved into the Cold&Go structure that is being used in legislative compliance markets today. The team’s priorities were to elevate the guest perception of the existing beverage program by employing a new format that could maintain internal temperatures for longer, enhance premiumization (through a more rigid structure), reduce condensation, and carry a positive environmental message. The Cold&Go cup checks all of these boxes. Cold&Go is a double-wall paper cup that brings enhanced thermal quality and rigidity to the Chick-fil-A® line of cold beverages and milkshakes, while also enhancing circularity. Made with paperboard from sustainably managed forests, Cold&Go reduces reliance on non-renewable resources and contains 10% post-consumer recycled material. The Cold&Go cup is recyclable in selected locations, with over 40 North American mills now accepting paper cups for recycling, including Graphic Packaging’s own mills. The new cup design features an insulative air gap which gives the cup superior rigidity. The use of an enhanced air gap, bottom nesting technology, and a unique glue bead pattern, delivers superior performance above that of other cups in the market, including single-wall and PET plastic cups. For the consumer, this means the temperature of beverages served in the cups is maintained for longer, the feel of the cup is more substantial due to a stronger exterior (thus premium), and condensation is significantly reduced. The new Cold&Go design combines advanced material technology with next-generation structural design to create a premium, highly insulated cup that provides consumers with an improved experience compared to the previous cups in their system and rivalling foam cups in the marketplace. The product is shipped from Graphic Packaging’s manufacturing location to a network of distribution centres working for Chick-fil-A where it is bundled with other restaurant consumables to be shipped to individual stores. Graphic Packaging worked with the Chick-fil-A team to determine slip sheets would be best to distribute the product based on the case size and weight, rather than using pallets. More Cold&Go cups fit on a truck versus foam cups. Chick-fil-A works with a third party to help manage distribution of their product, since they work with 30+ distribution centers. Chick-fil-A collects all its product from one manufacturing plant, allowing them to optimize the quantity of cups and lids shipped per truckload. Thanks to the reduction in space, fewer delivery journeys are needed. This effectively takes vehicles off the road, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.