Multipacks score big for on-the-go snackers: Video

Soccer matches, baseball practice, car trips and other activities dominate the occasions when food snacks and single-serve beverages sold in multipacks are consumed.

In our exclusive video series in partnership with Watch Me Think USA, we asked Americans to show us what snacks they regularly buy in multipacks and then tell us what they like about the packaging. Multipacks score well on convenience, price and freshness; but not so well when they contain product varieties or different flavors.

Overwhelmingly, snacks in multipacks are eaten outside the home.

One dad says, “Most of all, we use them when we’re taking the kids to practice or taking the kids to a game or going over to a soccer game or a lesson—wherever the kids may be going.”

This woman confirms that the eating occasions are not in the home: “We don’t eat them at home. They’re only eaten at lunch when we’re out and about.”

Another woman explains a bit more about why multipacks are preferred while out and about and not at home: “I feel like we’re always running out the door and we’re pretty much never home. But when I’m home, I try to be good and use the other packaged items.”

Perhaps she’s referring to being environmentally friendly when she says she tries to be “good.” Other “Thinkers” had similar thoughts about how the typically larger multipacks aren’t “green.”

“I do admit that I feel a lot of guilt because it’s not earth friendly,” says one woman about the Sun Chips variety pack she buys.

And this man says of a baked snack packed in a clear tray that is then flow wrapped in metallized film, “What I don’t like about these things is all this packaging. This is a big piece of plastic.”

Do consumers like variety in their multipacks? More or less.

On the more side, this woman says, “If I could improve something, I would put more of a variety in here.”

Another woman, in talking about the 24-pack of Propel bottled water says, “It would be nice if it also came in a few other flavors because it’s always just Grape, Berry and Strawberry/Kiwi, which are great, but you get sick of them sometimes.”

On the less side, this mom explains, talking about her kids: “If there’s a flavor that they’re not going to like, then it will go to waste because we would rather go hungry than eat something that we don’t love. So we only buy things if it only has one flavor in it.”

And what happens if one of the flavors is less popular? “I actually started to like the French Onion myself because my kids wouldn’t touch it,” says this woman, talking about the Sun Chips multipack box she buys.

Another consumer says of her Ritz savory pack, “This is Sundried Tomato and Basil, which, if they were going to put Wheat Thins in here, I wish it would just be the plain Wheat Thins. So these Wheat Thins usually go to somebody else that we’re with or in the garbage, unfortunately.”

Watch the video above to see what these Thinkers also say about multipacks when it comes to value, ease of transport, storage, durability and product damage.