The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Venture looks to aid eateries, customers
Local restaurateurs launch ‘green’ takeout container business
MILFORD — A couple who own a restaurant so acclaimed that two customers once flew in from Germany just to lunch there have started a seemingly “mundane” business in manufacturing takeout containers.
But it’s not as mundane as it sounds since “to-go orders” are everything to restaurants and customers during the pandemic.
Michelle and Amer Lebel of West Haven, owners of The CornerRestaurant, have launched Kraftgreen, a business that will manufacture customer-friendly, 100 percent biodegradable, affordable takeout containers at a warehouse they rented on Bic Drive.
The couple are hoping to blaze a trail in the industry while still serving their special brunch cuisine, featured on the Cooking Channel show “Road Trip with G. Garvin” and named one of the nation’s top 20 brunch spots in Travel and Leisure Magazine.
“Everybody will get a benefit out of this one. … There is a need for it,” said Amer Lebel, known for his specialty brunch dishes gleaned from the family’s travels around the world. “It’s a big risk, but we’re not afraid of anything.”
When he lamented during the pandemic how the overseas supply chain of containers made with Kraft paper caused delays, his wife, Michelle Lebel, who always keeps it interesting, told her husband, “Why not make our own?”
With the pandemic, there were long delays in obtaining the containers, prices and shipping costs increased , he said, making them hesitantly turn to Styrofoam for a bit. The Lebels said 90 percent of the Kraft paper containers are shipped from China.
Many restaurants have struggled to find containers that aren’t made of environmentally unfriendly materials or sharp metal with cumbersome lids, they said. Customers don’t want undersized, mislabeled containers that leak on themselves and their cars, they said.
The Lebels are using their products in their own restaurant — where takeout orders have gone from nearly nothing to about 70 percent of business — and now are marketing the product to restaurants throughout the state as well as to schools, hospitals, caterers and restaurant suppliers. The hope is to benefit restaurants nationwide with the product.
“Our supply chain is going to be hard to break down because its coming from here,” Amer Lebel said.
Their containers of different sizes are 100 percent biodegradable, leakproof, grease resistant, stackable, easy to label — or personalize and decorate — and they open into a plate. The containers are lined inside with a food-grade, FDA-approved coating, they said.
Michelle Lebel has dropped off samples to restaurants statewide — and the reviews so far are glowing.
Farah Masani, head of purchasing for Barcelona Wine Bar, a privately-owned restaurant group with 18 restaurants nationwide and five in Connecticut, said they’re trying the product out in their Fairfield location with great results and she will start using them in the other Connecticut locations in New Haven, Norwalk, Stamford and West Hartford.
“I just think it’s really, really telling and fortunate in these times with COVID when a restaurant owner whose frustrations with the lack of to-go packing available in the U.S.” does something about it “instead of being negative and sitting with nothing to do,” Masani said.
She said when one uses something good and local, everyone “flourishes.”
“I like them because they’re recyclable, durable and made in Connecticut,” she said. “They work well for our food — they open up into a plate.” Masani said she put Michelle Lebel in touch with many Fairfield County chefs.
Jim Hassenmayer, owner of Orange Ale House in Orange, said the Lebels get five stars as people and five stars for the new product that he’s putting to the test in his popular restaurant/bar.
“We’re behind it 100 percent — they’re fantastic,” he said of the containers. Hassenmayer said he was using pressed carboard for to-go orders until the supply chain broke down during the pandemic. They didn’t want to go back to Styrofoam, he said, because it “lasts for 1,000 years” and “we only have one Earth.”
Jim Calkins, owner of Seasonal Catering, a Milford-based, greencertified caterer, said he thinks Kraftgreen is a great product because the containers are leakproof, grease resistant and selfenclosed — so there are no lids to mess with.
That makes the process efficient when packing 800 lunches, he said, noting it’s only a “twotouch process”: open the box and close the box, he said.
“There’s no shuffling for a second lid,” he said. Metal containers are dangerous, he said, because inevitably, someone gets cut.
“The benefit we see about this is it’s a reliable source made in America,” Calkins said, and they help Seasonal Catering maintain its green certification requirements.
Michelle Lebel, who also does a lot of catering, said with COVID in the mix, customers don’t want
trays or platters of food for events, but rather want individual servings that won’t be subject to the touch of others.
After six months of research, they ordered a custom-made manufacturing machine that is due to arrive in a couple of weeks so they can mass produce out of the warehouse.
The couple said takeout business is anything but easy, and the containers help it all go more smoothly.
“You don’t want a mistake on takeout,” Amer Lebel said.
Michelle Lebel said the boxes are easy to label — such as whether an order is with or without onions. And they can be decorated with personal messages, stickers and stamped with a restaurant logo.
“That’s why I love the boxes. Ten orders can come up and it helps keep them straight,” she said.
Right now they have one size in stock, but will start producing several other sizes — bigger ones among them — as soon as the machinery arrives and production begins.
“It seems mundane, but it’s a whole new excitement,” Michelle Lebel said. “We are learning as we go. I’ve been trying to sell, a whole new ballgame for me, but I told myself, no regrets, have to try . ... You know the saying, do one thing a day that scares you.”
The couple said the best feature about their takeout boxes is that they are 100 percent biodegradable, but a close second is “how beautiful the food will look in them.”
“Everyone is very aware of it being biodegradable,” especially the younger generation, Amer Lebel said. “It makes us feel good and it makes the customer feel
The Lebels are using their products in their own restaurant — where takeout orders have gone from nearly nothing to about 70 percent of business — and now are marketing the product to restaurants throughout the state as well as to schools, hospitals, caterers and restaurant suppliers.
good.”
Michelle Lebel said while many not in the business might consider restaurants to be competitive with one another, many in the industry are friends and have the belief that there is room for all.
“We all have our own niche,” Michelle Lebel said. “Amer and I frequent many restaurants and it’s always an honor when other restaurateurs eat here, because we all want good food. Honestly, it is harder to approach people I know, but I have complete faith in the product.”
As for the restaurant at 105 River St. that they’ve owned for 23 years, Amer Lebel said, “We’re not going anywhere.”
They have put their heart and soul into it and are heavily involved in helping the community.
The Lebel family has traveled the world — to Africa, Argentina and Brazil — in search of new recipes and ingredients. One of Amer Lebel’s signature recipes is South Indian spiced duck, wrapped in a crisp bacon-layered tortilla with scrambled eggs and a mild cheese; another is African hash of crushed, dried eggplant, spices, beef, lentil, poached eggs, crispy potatoes and bearnaise sauce.
“That’s our first baby,” Michelle Lebel said of the restaurant.