Package with staggered product slices and process for producing the same

A process of producing a package having staggered product slices comprising:

• providing a first group of product ribbons formed of a flexible, plastic material, such as cheese, said ribbons each having substantially the same lateral dimension;
• maintaining the lateral edges of the ribbons of said first group in alignment with one another;
• providing a second group of product ribbons formed of a flexible, plastic material, such as cheese, said ribbons each having substantially the same lateral dimensions as the first group of product ribbons;
• maintaining the lateral edges of the ribbons of said second group in alignment with one another;
• arranging said first and second groups into a stack in which a ribbon of each group is adjacent a ribbon of the other group with the lateral edges of all the ribbons being parallel and with the lateral edges of the first group being offset from the lateral edges of the second group, the dimension of said offset being sufficiently small to prevent the offset edges from sagging;
• said edge maintaining and group arranging steps being performed by moving the ribbons of each group past guide members and locating the guide members such that a guide member bears against at least one lateral edge of each ribbon;
• severing said stack of ribbons in longitudinally spaced locations to segregate the stack of ribbons into individual stacks of staggered product slices;
• and applying a wrapper to each individual stack of staggered product slices.

In an improved process for stacking and packaging uniform slices of food wherein the food is produced in substantially continuous plural ribbons vertically descending from a congealing roll, the improvement comprising:

• twisting each vertical ribbon to arrange all surfaces thereof parallel and in opposed face-to-face alignment;
• aligning one set of outside edges of alternate ribbons;
• aligning the opposite set of outside edges of the intervening ribbons so as to be offset a small distance sufficient to present at least one grippable edge per slice and to preserve the interdigitating identity of those edges when overwrapped with respect to corresponding edges of said alternate ribbons;
• turning each ribbon horizontally in parallel courses so as to form a group of said ribbons stacked in surface-abutting relation having the outer edges thereof alternately overlapped in opposite directions;
• cutting said grouped ribbons at equal intervals to produce groups of slices;
• and wrapping said groups of slices.