What happened to hospital diet kits, and where to get them now
The color-coded diet kits hospital tray lines ran on for decades are disappearing after a 2026 plant closure. What changed, what it costs a kitchen, and how to replace them line for line.
By David Weissman, CEO, Medd Max
For more than thirty years, the diet kit was the simplest thing in a hospital kitchen. A yellow pouch meant sugar free. Gray meant low sodium. Orange meant both. Blue meant regular. Tray-line staff grabbed one pouch per tray card and the condiments, straw and napkin were right every time, without anyone reading a packet label.
Most of those pouches came from one place: the King Packaging plant at 407 Sangamore Road in Bremen, Georgia. The brand was sold as King's, later WNA Bremen-King's, under Waddington North America, which is owned by Novolex. Its catalog still calls the system "the industry standard" for error-free color coding.
What changed
- Dec 9, 2024Novolex agrees to buy Pactiv Evergreen for $6.7 billion.
- Apr 2025Deal closes. Novolex now owns Pactiv Evergreen and Waddington North America (WNA), home of the King Packaging Diet Kit line, and starts consolidating foodservice plants.
- Jan 30, 2026Plastics News reports WNA is closing its Georgia plant. The WARN filing: Bremen, Georgia, 49 employees, permanent closure, separations March 31 to May 29, 2026.
- Spring 2026Distributors list King's diet kits as "call for availability." Kitchens start hand-building condiment sets.
- Dec 2026First Medd Max stock lands: two heavyweight cutlery kits early December, the other seventeen kits mid-December. Pre-orders open now.
None of this was aimed at hospitals. Diet kits are a small line inside a very large foodservice packaging company that is now digesting a $6.7 billion acquisition. Small lines made in a single 49-person plant are the first thing a consolidation removes. The result for a dietary director is the same either way: the item number on your order guide stops shipping.
The color code the kits were built around
The reason the kits mattered was never the sugar packet. It was the color band. One glance confirms the kit against the tray card, from across the line, without opening the pouch.
What it costs a kitchen to go without
Without kits, the choices are to hand-assemble condiment sets per diet order, or to buy plain wrapped cutlery and have staff pull packets at the line. Both add labor to every tray, and both put the diet check back on a person reading a tray card under time pressure. A sugar packet on a diabetic tray or a salt packet on a cardiac tray is the most common diet-order error in long-term care. It is exactly the error the color band existed to prevent.
There is a second cost that shows up later: when a distributor cannot fill a kit item, the substitution is usually a generic cutlery pack with no diet marking at all. The kitchen's tray-card accuracy drops and nobody connects it to a plant closing in Georgia.
What to do now
- Pull 90 days of kit purchases by item number and diet color. That is your demand by code.
- Count weeks of inventory on hand against that run rate. If you are under eight weeks, you are already in the gap.
- Get a cross-reference: same diet code, same format (condiment-only, condiment with straw and napkin, full meal kit, wrapped cutlery), same case pack.
- Run a sample case on one tray line before you convert the building.
- Set the new item up with your distributor so the change is a line swap, not a menu change.
Where to get them now
Medd Max manufactures a 19-kit line on the same color logic: five condiment-only kits (1,000 per case), three tray kits with straw and napkin (250 per case), four complete meal kits with heavyweight cutlery (250 per case) and seven wrapped cutlery kits in heavyweight, mediumweight and compostable CPLA. Every kit carries a UPC-A. Every case is printed with the item number, the contents and the count.
Pre-orders are open now. A new account's first order ships in about six weeks. From then on we hold stock for you and ship from our warehouse in New York. First stock lands early December 2026 for the two heavyweight cutlery kits and mid-December for the rest of the line.
Send us the diet kit item numbers you buy today and we return a line-by-line replacement list within one business day.
Sources. Plastics News, "Waddington North America closing Georgia plant," Jan 30, 2026. Packaging Dive, January 2026 plant-closure roundup (WARN: Bremen, GA, 49 employees, separations Mar 31–May 29, 2026). Novolex, Pactiv Evergreen acquisition announcement, Dec 9, 2024; closing April 2025. Waddington North America foodservice catalog, Diet Kit section. Distributor listings for WNA Bremen-King's diet kits, Nov 2026.
