New lunch bag will keep food hot, water bottle cool
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
From our Build a Better Mousetrap File comes this report: Someone has built a better lunch bag.
Booklines Hawaii
At least, it's a lunch bag that's selling very well. Gotta Be Hawaiian is a line of collapsible insulated totes that keep things warm or cool, as the case may be.
Among the offerings of the Gotta Be Hawaiian line is a cooler that holds 24 cans. For some, it's an ideal lunch pack.
Warm, in the case of your plate lunch. Cool, in the case of your water bottle. Cold, in the case of your case of soda.
Booklines Hawaii Ltd., best known as a book distributor, recently donned a hat as manufacturer, conceiving and designing a line that includes a lunch bag ($6), a plate-lunch bag ($9), a water-bottle tote ($6) and a set of can coolers in six-, 12- and 24-pack sizes ($10-$18).
The initial idea came from Claudia Cannon, Booklines' marketing director, who said she wanted "a high-quality cooler line in Hawaiian prints because so many customers asked for that."
After some brainstorming, "We decided to go ahead with the idea we wanted to get the highest quality we could because we had been told by customers that many similar items on the market leak or 'sweat,'" Cannon added.
The totes are sold at Daiei, Wal-Mart, Foodland and other retailers, and online (go to www.booklines.com and click on the "Collapsible Cooler Line" link toward the bottom of the page). Orders are being taken at the site, which is reporting being out of stock until the end of this month.
They're at Daiei, but selling fast, said Davin Gutierres, sporting goods manager at the Kaheka Street store.
"I would say, VERY fast," Gutierres said. "We've sold maybe 200 in the last four or five days."
The lunch pack and the water bottle tote seem to be the biggest sellers. But Booklines execs think the other varieties fill their respective niches, too.
The plate-lunch idea came from product-development director Evelyn Hee, an "avid home luncher," Cannon said, who wanted a shape that would hold a full plate. It's also designed to double as a pie holder, Cannon said.
"It's lots of fun to watch customers pick out their favorite shape," she added. "I watched some women at Wal-Mart discuss the relative sizes and shapes of their lunches as they shopped. One woman was definitely a bigger eater than the other and chose the 24-can cooler as a lunch box."
Of course, if the teri beef in your plate lunch remains hot, what about your mac salad remaining cold? Oh, well, it's something for the Build a Better Lunch Box people to consider for the next upgrade.
