First place for the BBQ Pizza Baker
Bodegraven, 1 July, 2019 - Boska challenges young design talent to develop “cool food tools”. Through the Boska Design Award, the company, which is famous for the world’s best cheese slicer, collaborates with TU Delft on the final project of the Industrial Design Bachelor’s degree. This assignment is in line with Boska’s wider focus of going from Cheesewares to food tools. In this year’s edition, 16 students took part in the competition. The winner was Matthijs Bakker with the BBQ Pizza Baker. Second and third prizes respectively went to Bowien van der Linden for the Veggie Pizza Baker set and Theo Mesplou for the Pasta Party.
Food tool talent
Boska has been working with TU Delft on the final project for the Industrial Design Bachelor’s program for several years. This time, 16 students got to work for Boska. Martijn Bos, Boska’s CEO, says, “During the briefing, we discussed commercial needs and possibilities with the students. A new addition this year is the focus on food groups beyond just cheese, which has traditionally been our thing. We are moving in a new direction, but we are applying our 120 years of experience with Cheesewares to creating other quality food tools. 90% of what’s out there is either of interior quality and doesn’t work, works but is not exactly nice to look at, or is beautifully designed and completely unaffordable.” Boksa wants to change all that, and we are challenging ourselves and the students to come up with attractive food tools that are high quality, affordable and functional.
Lots of vegetarian options
The products the students developed needed to fit into one of four food categories: Pizza, Pasta, Meat or Vegetarian. These are the groups that Boska intends to focus on in the years to come. In 2018, Boska introduced the “Chocowares” line of products designed for enjoying chocolate. In keeping with current food trends but nevertheless worth noting, nearly 50% of the students chose the Vegetarian track.
Pizza
Two of the three winning designs were in the Pizza category. “Matthijs’ design makes it possible to bake a pizza on your barbecue, which is not necessarily unique, but his design really sets it apart. Bowien’s Veggie Pizza Baker actually combined two categories - Pizza and Vegetarian - in a very promising way. We will be testing the feasibility of their designs, and if the assessments look good, we may very well incorporate the winning design into our product line. So who knows: you just might be baking a pizza with Boska sometime soon”, Bos says.
*The three winning TU Delft students - Theo Mesplou, Bowien van der Linden and Matthijs Bakker - surrounded by Frank Bleeker, Martijn Bos and Frank de Smidt from Boska.