The fast-food industry uses a wide variety of containers and packaging for serving various food products. One common type of container comprising a base portion and an integral lid connected by a living hinge is often referred to as a "clamshell" container. Such containers are in widespread use, especially for relatively small products such as sandwiches and chicken nugget products. While such containers are versatile and relatively inexpensive, they are not well adapted for use with larger food products.
Pizza, for example, is generally sold in square boxes formed from a relatively heavy grade of corrugated cardboard. Such containers are suitable for holding entire pizza pies, which may be 16 inches in diameter or larger. However, restaurants often sell pizza by the individual slice, or are called upon to wrap one or several slices in a "doggie bag" for patrons who have eaten at the restaurant. To make the slices easy to carry, customers may be given a pizza box large enough for an entire pizza to hold the one or several slices, or the slices may be wrapped in foil. The former method is wasteful, as a large amount of heavy cardboard is used to hold as little as one slice of pizza. This method can also be messy--a single slice of pizza is apt to slide from side to side in a large pizza box, and may be damaged when carried by a patron. The latter method provides no support for the pizza and the wrapping often sticks to the melted pizza cheese. Furthermore, a foil-wrapped slice of pizza generally requires two hands to carry, and when the pizza is wrapped and given to the customer hot, the foil provides very little thermal insulation.
Clamshell containers have also been used for individual pizza slices. U.S. Pat. No. 5,788,145, for example, shows a one-piece, triangular clamshell container useful for holding a single slice of pizza. A single pizza slice, however, is often 8 to 10 inches long. A hinged clamshell container for this slice would therefore be at least 16 to 20 inches long when open. While such containers can be nested when stored, their length makes them awkward to use and may present storage difficulties--they may be too long to fit on a shelf having a normal width, for example. Such containers can be stored in a closed configuration to reduce their length, but in this configuration they cannot be nested and they take up a large volume of space, again leading to storage inefficiencies.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a storage container for a single slice of pizza or similar food product that is easy to use and that can be stored in a space-efficient manner while still providing the benefits of an inexpensive, lockable clamshell-type container.