Lunchtime in the office is sometimes a chaotic event. The kitchen’s a mess, there’s a line to warm up your chow — at the risk of sounding like an informercial: Don’t you wish there was a better way? Heatbox reckons it has that answer.

Currently being shown off at CES, the Heatbox is a crowdfunded lunchbox. Yes, really. And, much like the ill-fated Juicero, it tackles a very specific problem — one that you probably don’t really need solved. You see, the Heatbox — as the name suggests — heats up your lunch. Without recourse to microwaves or ovens.

The Bain of your life

Much like the traditional bain-marie, the Heatbox uses heated water (far less than bulky catering equipment, to be fair) to warm up your lunch. There’s a 18,000mAh battery doing the job of warming your gourmet lunch, an operation that takes apparently takes just eight minutes. Which is perhaps a shorter wait than standing in line while the three chaps with bags of Two-Minute Noodles, the lady with a packet of popcorn, and that one guy who insists on bringing fish to work get their lunches squared away. But at what cost?

As the Heatbox has already successfully completed its Kickstarter campaign, you’ll have to look elsewhere for an early version of the self-heating storage container. Happily, it’s available for pre-order over at IndieGoGo. If you’re quick, you can grab one for R2,100 — down from the R3,000 retail price. And, if you’re paying that for a lunchbox, you better be loading it up with the sort of stuff that makes people take photographs of your lunch.

Source: Engadget