Salt and Pepper Shakers

Our best-selling product, reliably delivered on-time every time for 25 years

Quality Makes Us Global

The Product Everyone Buys and Uses

Most people don’t give much thought to the salt and pepper shakers they buy at food retailers or use in restaurants and other food service establishments. Chances are good, however, that most people have purchased and/or used salt and pepper shakers manufactured and filled right here at Global Packaging. After all, our product is available for purchase in just about every major food retailer (grocery stores, supermarkets, and the big box department stores that also carry groceries) and is widely distributed for use in the food service industry (restaurants, cafeterias, institutional food service operations at healthcare and educational facilities, and hospitality businesses such as hotels and inns) through many different wholesalers and distributors.
packaged salt and pepper shakers in Everyday shrink wrap

The Global Packaging Shaker

Our salt and pepper shakers are the only all-plastic shakers available on the market today. Shakers by our competitors may incorporate paper (cardboard), but they don’t hold up well. Others have some kind of metal piece included, such as the bottom, but those can scratch various table and counter surfaces. Our all-plastic design solves both pain points and features the “spin dial” on the top for easy opening and closing. The main body of our shakers is made from recyclable plastic so environmentally conscious customers and consumers can do their part to recycle these plastics to become new products. Everything is done in-house (no outsourcing), including the injection molding, the assembly, filling of the shakers, and the packaging of the shakers into retail units (pairs of salt and pepper shakers). Many of our customers are proud to carry our products with a “Made in the USA” label.
pepper shakers in a factory

National Brand Equivalency

When our salt and pepper shakers are made available through food retailers, they carry the branding of that retailer, such as a grocery store chain. Our shakers have achieved and maintain National Brand Equivalency (NBE) status. In other words, the NBE status means our products are every bit as good as the national brand leaders. For salt, the main equivalency point is sourcing iodized salt for home and food service use.

In terms of pepper, the current trend is that people don’t want it to be like applying a dust to their food. They want to be able to really see the individual flakes of pepper, which is why we obtain a more granular or coarser grind. This is measured by what kind of “mesh” would be needed in a sieve to allow a given size of particle to pass through, as in how many holes per square inch. The fewer holes per square inch, the larger the particle. Whole or half-cracked peppercorns would be rated at 6–8 mesh (fewer, bigger holes to allow bigger particles through). The current trend we follow is 28-mesh for home table and restaurant ground black pepper.

If the national brands make a significant change to their product, we follow it. We closely monitor all aspects of the quality of the national brands, compare it to the quality of our product, and ensure equivalency. The retailers and distributors we sell to are also checking up on our quality at least once a year to make sure it’s still matching national brand equivalency.

Our Products are a Food Retailer’s Dream

Global Packaging offers its salt and pepper shakers in ways and formats that make sense for food retailers of any size. We allow smaller retailers to do smaller minimum orders, such as just one pallet or not even a whole pallet, so they don’t run into needing space to store our inventory. This is also aligned well to so many retailers wanting just-in-time delivery to reduce their own warehousing costs. But the two-year shelf-life of our products also works well for those who have room to store our product and want to make bigger orders. We also make a very popular 72-unit (pairs of shakers) display stand that takes up all of 18 square inches of floor space and almost always sells out within two weeks of being put up in a store. Our food retailer customers are always pleasantly surprised at the return they get on these products.

It’s also easy for retailers to incorporate our salt and pepper shakers into all kinds of promotional bundles. When it’s picnic and barbecue season retailers bundle our products with ketchup and mustard, or paper plates, or a corn on the cob promotion. They can be incorporated into promotions for baking supplies and products. Our products tie in very easily to all kinds of things that are going into the shopping carts of consumers, and our food retail customers love that.

Private Labeling for Customer Branding

As a National Brand Equivalency (NBE) product, many of our food retailer customers want the shaker pairs to be packaged with their retail brand, whether it’s a chain of grocery stores or big box retailers that also carry groceries. Our packaging lines are set up in such a way that we can easily switch between brands with very little down time. We also work with many customers on more specific branding of salt and pepper shakers such as for colleges and universities as well as professional sports teams.

Global Packaging Delivers On Time Every Time

There have been unprecedented disruptions to global supply chains in recent years that have caused many a headache for manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. These headaches mostly come in the form of delayed shipping and delivery times. Fortunately, Global Packaging has not fallen prey to these disruptions. We continue to maintain on-time deliveries in spite of global supply chain disruptions. Our customers have come to depend on the reliability of our two-week-or-less delivery timeframe. In part this is because we do everything in-house, so we’re in 100% control of the entire production process. Nothing is outsourced, so we’re not held hostage by problems with outsourced processes.

How is Global Packaging able to maintain its commitment to excellence in customer service despite global supply chain disruptions? The answer is a surprisingly simple three-fold answer: Advance planning, diversity in suppliers, and top-tier carriers. We keep our finger on the pulse of supply chains and adjust our purchasing and production schedules to build up an adequate supply of inventory to ensure we will be able to maintain our record of reliable on-time deliveries. We also maintain relationships with multiple suppliers, which means we always have a “plan B” and even “plan C” to make sure we can get what we need to make our products. Because some of the supplies we need come from overseas, this means making sure each supplier comes in through a different port if one of them isn’t functioning well. Building in these redundancies is key to maintaining our reputation for delivering on time every time. Finally, we work with a premier carrier we can depend on to get our deliveries where they need to go on time.

In today’s business environment, consolidation is the name of the game. Large food retailers and food service operations generally don’t want to work with a vendor who only supplies one product they need, but Global Packaging continues to dominate the salt and pepper shakers market because our reputation for on-time delivery and customer service makes it worth the while of those customers to do business with us. It’s why some of our biggest food retail customers have been ordering from us for more than 20 years. It’s also why our products are found in all 50 states of the US, throughout Canada, Central America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. And during the worst of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic, we did not miss a single shipment.

Salt and Pepper Shakers by the Numbers

Production: 75,000 pairs of salt and pepper shakers made each day
Shipping: A semi-trailer truckload per day
Salt: 4 million pounds of salt packaged into shakers per year
Pepper: Over 1 million pounds of pepper packaged into shakers per year
salt and pepper shakers on conveyor belt assembly line

Why Global Packaging?

When it comes to salt and pepper shakers, the reasons we get new customers boils down to our longevity in the business with major customers, competitive pricing, on-time deliveries every time without fail, and processes so well established that there are simply never any complaints or issues to deal with. Global Packaging is a hassle-free, totally reliable source for a very basic food retail and food service product that is in constant demand everywhere. Feel free to get in touch through the Contact Us page of our website to discuss establishing a working partnership that will bring value to your company for many years to come.
pepper shakers in a factory