Tamper-evident packaging for delivery means closing every bag and container so that opening it in transit leaves visible evidence. In California it is the law for third-party delivery orders; everywhere else it is platform policy and cheap insurance against the disputes that eat delivery margin.
The topic got real in 2021 and has stayed real as delivery settled in as a permanent channel. Customers file tampering and missing-item claims, drivers get accused of grazing, and operators eat refunds they cannot contest because the bag went out open. A seal that costs a few cents and a few seconds changes all three outcomes. This guide covers what the law actually requires, what the platforms actually say, which sealing methods work at line speed, and what the whole thing costs using real case pricing from our catalog.
What California AB 3336 actually requires
California Assembly Bill 3336, signed in September 2020 and effective January 1, 2021, is the one statewide tamper-evident delivery law on the books in the United States. The operative requirement: all bags or containers of ready-to-eat food transported from a food facility to a customer through a third-party food delivery platform must be closed by the food facility with a tamper-evident method before the delivery driver takes possession.
Read the scope carefully, because it is narrower than most summaries suggest:
- It applies to third-party platform orders. DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, and similar. An order your own staff delivers is not covered by this section, though sealing it anyway is obviously smart.
- The facility does the sealing, not the driver. The seal must be applied before handoff. A driver-applied sticker does not satisfy the statute.
- “Tamper-evident method” is not defined as a specific product. Stickers, sealed bags, shrink bands, and tear-strip containers all pass the practical test: opening leaves evidence.
- Prepackaged non-potentially-hazardous foods are exempt, as are charitable feeding programs and food-bank donations.
The same bill also requires food to be held at safe temperatures during delivery and sets sanitation standards for holding areas, but the sealing requirement is the part that changed packaging purchasing.
No other state has passed an identical statewide statute as of 2026. Several local health departments have folded sealing recommendations into their delivery guidance, and industry press has tracked draft rules in other states, so the honest read is: California is the mandate, and the rest of the country is trending the same direction. If you operate multi-state, building the seal into your standard delivery workflow now is cheaper than retrofitting it later.
SOS Paper Bags: current case pricing
All 9 SKUs →| Product | Pack | Case | Per unit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16# SOS Paper Bag — Brown — 500ct | 500ct | $14.54 | $0.029 | Volume quote → |
| 20# SOS Tall Paper Bag — Brown — 500ct | 500ct | $15.83 | $0.032 | Volume quote → |
| 20# SOS Shorty Paper Bag — Brown — 500ct | 500ct | $15.83 | $0.032 | Volume quote → |
| 12# SOS Paper Bag — White — 500ct | 500ct | $16.23 | $0.033 | Volume quote → |
Public case pricing, freight quoted separately. Volume and contract pricing on request.
Platform policy is not law, but it behaves like one
DoorDash and Uber Eats both address sealed packaging, and it is worth being precise about what each actually says, because “DoorDash requires it” gets repeated in ways the source material does not support.
DoorDash recommends that merchants seal orders with tamper-evident packaging, and its driver-facing Merchant Protocol is firm on the other side of the handoff: Dashers must never open a sealed merchant bag, even to verify contents. That second rule is the practical payoff. A sealed bag shifts item-check responsibility to your line, where it belongs, and gives you a clean answer when a customer claims the order was opened.
Uber Eats tells merchants in its food safety guidance to seal each order in tamper-evident packaging before handoff. It is framed as expected best practice rather than a contractual mandate.
So outside California the accurate statement is: no law compels you, both major platforms expect it, and the dispute economics reward it. When a refund request comes in claiming tampering or missing items, an operator whose orders go out sealed has a materially better story than one whose bags leave the pass open. That is not a legal argument; it is a chargeback argument, and delivery operators live on chargeback arguments.
Sealing methods compared
Every method below satisfies the practical tamper-evidence test. They differ in speed at the pass, equipment, and cost. Costs are relative because label and band pricing varies widely by vendor and print run; container pricing cited later comes from our catalog.
| Method | How it works | Speed at the pass | Equipment | Relative cost per order |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tamper-evident label or sticker | Adhesive label across the bag fold or container seam; tears or voids on opening | Fast (2-4 seconds) | None | Lowest |
| Fold-and-staple plus label | Double-fold bag top, staple, label across the fold | Fast (3-5 seconds) | Stapler | Lowest |
| Integrated seal bags | Bags with a built-in adhesive security strip; peel and press | Fastest (1-2 seconds) | None | Low to moderate (premium bag) |
| Shrink band | Plastic band around a container or cup lid seam, shrunk with heat | Slow (5-10 seconds plus heat step) | Heat gun or tunnel | Moderate |
| Tear-strip hinged container | Perforated strip molded into the clamshell; closing seals it, opening breaks it | Fastest (zero extra step) | None | Built into container price |
| Sealed cup (no-hole lid or film seal) | No-hole lid with straw bagged separately, or film sealed by machine | Fast (lid swap is zero extra step) | None, or sealing machine for film | Lowest for lid swap |
Two patterns worth pulling out of the table. First, the methods that win at volume are the ones with zero incremental steps: tear-strip containers and lid swaps seal the order as a side effect of packing it. Second, the sticker-on-folded-bag method wins everywhere else because it needs no equipment, works on every bag you already stock, and doubles as a branding surface if you print your logo on the label.
Tear-strip tamper evidence is a hinged-container feature: the perforated strip is molded into the one-piece hinge design, which is one more argument for hinged in the delivery channel. The full format tradeoff is covered in our hinged vs non-hinged guide. Non-hinged tray-and-lid systems get their tamper evidence from stickers or shrink bands instead.
The drink problem
Food is easy to seal. Drinks are the gap in most delivery programs, and they are also where the ugliest tampering stories come from. A cold cup with a straw slot is an open container: the slot is a direct path to the drink, and a lid can be pried and reseated without obvious evidence.
The fix costs nothing at the SKU level. Run two lid SKUs per rim size: straw-slot lids for dine-in and pickup, no-hole lids for delivery tickets, with straws bagged separately. From our catalog, a 98mm PET flat lid with no hole (SKU 622739) runs $12.46 per 1000-count case, which is $0.0125 per lid. The same lid with an X-slot (SKU 622677) runs $12.72 per 1000, or $0.0127 per lid. The delivery-safe lid is actually two hundredths of a cent cheaper. The cost of solving the drink problem is a second slot in your lid rack, not money.
For a stronger drink seal, add a tamper label from the lid wall down onto the cup body, or place lidded drinks in their own bag and seal the bag. Sealing-film machines (common in bubble tea) are the gold standard but only make sense at drink volumes that justify the equipment. Matching lids to cups by rim diameter is its own discipline; see the cold cup lid selection guide before adding a second lid SKU.
Sauces and dressings are a smaller version of the same problem. A 2 oz portion cup with a snapped lid inside a sealed bag is effectively double-sealed: from our catalog, the 2 oz clear portion cup (PC200CLR) at $16.75 per 2500-count case is $0.0067 per cup, and the matching 2 oz lid (LDPC1525) at $13.06 per 2500 is $0.0052, so a lidded sauce unit costs $0.0067 plus $0.0052, or about 1.2 cents.
What a sealed order actually costs
Worked example, all container pricing from our catalog. Take a typical delivery ticket: one entree in a clamshell, one sauce, one drink, one bag.
- Bag: 25# tall brown SOS bag (SOS2500500K), $16.64 per 500-count case, which is $16.64 divided by 500, or $0.0333 per bag. You were buying the bag anyway; the fold is free.
- Seal: one tamper-evident label across the fold, priced by your label vendor. Stock label rolls are cheap; custom-printed labels cost more but do branding work at the same time.
- Entree container: 9 x 6 x 3 PET clamshell (USPET-9X6), $35.31 per 250-count case, or $0.1413 per unit. Already in the order cost; a hinged tear-strip version, where available, moves the seal into the container itself.
- Drink: no-hole lid swap at $0.0125 per lid instead of $0.0127. Net change: zero.
- Sauce: lidded 2 oz portion cup at $0.0119 per unit as computed above.
The incremental cost of making this order tamper-evident is one label plus roughly three seconds of labor. Every other line item was already on the ticket. This is why sealing programs succeed or fail on workflow design rather than budget: the money is trivial, and the discipline is the hard part. Bag selection itself (SOS vs handle styles, sizes, paper weights) is covered in the paper bag pillar guide.
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SOS Paper Bags
9 SKUs · from $14.54 – $19.71 per case
Implementation checklist for an operator
Rolling out sealing across a delivery operation is a one-week project. In order:
- Decide the seal method per package type. Bags get fold-and-label. Drinks get no-hole lids with bagged straws. Sauces get lidded portion cups. Entrees keep their current container, with tear-strip hinged as the upgrade path.
- Split lid SKUs by channel. Add the no-hole lid in every rim size you pour, and mark the delivery lid slot clearly at the drink station.
- Source labels sized to your bag fold. A label that is too small tears free without voiding. If you custom-print, one label design across all bag sizes keeps it simple.
- Write the seal into the pack sequence. The seal is the last step before the shelf, after the item check. Sealing before the item check guarantees re-opened bags and wasted labels.
- Seal at the pass, not at handoff. In California this is the legal requirement: the facility seals before the driver takes possession. Everywhere else it is still the right sequence because it closes the accountability window completely.
- Photograph sealed orders during the first week. A short photo habit builds the dispute file that makes platform claims winnable, and it audits whether the line is actually sealing.
- Check your local health code. California operators are covered by AB 3336. Everyone else should ask their county health department whether delivery sealing guidance exists, because local rules are moving faster than state legislatures.
The short version: seal everything, seal it at the pass, and solve drinks with a lid swap that costs nothing. California made it law; the platforms made it policy; the refund math makes it worth doing regardless of where you operate.