Silicone Cups - win lunch time & turn any lunch box in to a bento box with 2 or more compartments

10th March 2023

posted in Natural Home & Eco Friendly

Are silicone cups the answer to a great lunch box hack? Most kitchen cupboards have a stack of lunch boxes in them, but not everyone has a bento box in their collection. A couple of years ago now we saw a K-mart Bento Box Hack that we had been telling our customers about for years. In this blog, we'll show you a new product we have in store to turn any lunch box in to a bento box and also show you 2 products you may already have at home that will do exactly the same thing that we've been selling for almost a decade.

Silicone Cups designed specifically for a Bento Box

Bento Cups are little silicone cups that are square with crinkle cut sides (like potato chips) so they're easy to get in an out of any lunch box. Simply nest them inside your lunch box and use them to separate your food.

The image above shows you how they fit in the Little Lunch Box Co Bento Boxes, as they have been sized to fit inside their own bento boxes, but they will fit inside any lunch box to create bento box sized compartments. They are available to buy in sets of 3 in different colours.

Little Lunch Box Co Bento Cups in a variety of sizes and colours

Silicone Cups alternative - the Silicone Jumbo Ice Cube Trays

This is close to the K-Mart hack and we've been selling these for years now. These are jumbo ice cube trays. We have always promoted them to freeze fruit, home made baby food and left over bone broth. They also make an excellent DIY bento box conversion.

Here you can see we have frozen quite a lot of fruit and mint and some leftover smoothie for ice cold flavoured water in summer, so there's plenty of room for chopped up fruit, berries and all kinds of snacks in each compartment. Each cube measures approx. 5cm x 5cm. Check the measurements on your own lunch boxes first to make sure this will fit, especially the height.

Silicone Cups used for making muffins & cupcakes

Available in 2 different sizes, Avanti make cupcake cups and muffin cups are made out of silicone. Like the purpose made bento cups, you can be a lot more flexible with the configuration of your DIY bento box layout when using these. They're flexible, easily 'squished in to shape' if need be, and they can be lifted out of the lunch box with their food still inside to make it easier to eat what's inside.

Why do kids like bento boxes over traditional lunch boxes?

Fussy eaters will have a better lunch time experience with a bento box, and as you can see above, you don't need to replace every lunch box in your home, you can just convert one you already have in to a bento configuration.

Jessica Ferris RD (registered dietician) talks about the top 3 reasons to love bento boxes for school in this article.

The first reason Jessica discusses is making lunches easier to pack for busy parents. If you have multiple food items to pack and it's all going in to one food container with multiple compartments, it's quicker and easier to pack. It also means your child is far less likely to lose a small snack pot or even just the lid, which can be problematic.

The second reason is multi compartment bentos fit in with most schools litter free lunch policies. No bags, no wrappers, no cling film either. It allows you to buy food in bulk and divide it up daily. If you have ever priced a giant bag of popcorn vs individual single serve packs, you'll see it soon adds up.

The third and most important reason is that it's easy to access for your child and they are far more likely to eat if they can see their multiple choices all laid out in front of them and the food isn't touching.