'Tastee' skillet meals come in pouch

Tastee Choice Food Products is launching a new line of gourmet frozen skillet meals featuring top-quality ingredients in brightly printed, flexible standup pouches. Featuring rich graphics, the packages hold 24 oz of meal components in four varieties, including two Asian Style meals with shrimp, rice and vegetables and two Mediterranean Style meals with shrimp, pasta and vegetables that are quick to prepare and can go from freezer to table in 10 minutes.

"We have control of the raw material from the land and ocean, to the factory, all the way to the finished product in U.S. stores," says Tastee Choice's president and CEO Jose Thomas. To maximize package appeal with superior print quality, the company says it chose a standup pouch produced and printed in India with design, prepress assistance and print assistance and brand innovation provided by California-based design agency Pyramid Creative Studios (www.pyramidcreativestudios.com).

Available nationally, the glitzy, metallized film pouches are made of polyethylene terephthalate/PE extrudate/metallized PET/linear-low-density PE. They display vivid, eight-color, gravure-printed graphics and full-panel product photography of the meals to spur impulse purchases and whet the appetite. The line's price points are said to be equally pleasing to consumers and retailers alike, the company says. Combined with rigorous quality processes, exotic menu descriptions and a rich look, the pouches are sure to appeal to diners' finer senses.