Cardboard Catering Trays

We specify food-contact compliant boards and inks where the pack touches food directly. Tell us whether contact is direct or through a liner for cardboard catering trays, because it changes which stocks are available to you.

A grease-resistant coating or a greaseproof liner. Untreated board will always strike through eventually with hot, oily food — that is a property of the material rather than a quality fault, and it is inexpensive to design out.

That depends on board grade, contents weight and how long the stack stands. Send us the stack height and the weight above the bottom unit and we will specify to it rather than guessing at a grade.

With the right board and coating. Moisture from hot food softens an under-specified tray faster than grease does, so we usually recommend both a heavier caliper and a grease-resistant coating for hot service.

Ordered online, cardboard catering trays start from $0.30 per unit on our standard build, with free shipping to the US, UK, Canada and Australia. For special sizes, materials or large runs we quote, and for this format the biggest levers are quantity, print route, board grade and how many finishing passes are involved. Finishing passes are the lever buyers most often underestimate: each one is a separate run through the line.

Yes. We can send a plain unprinted sample so you can check the fit and structure, or a printed prototype for color and finish. Sample costs are normally credited against the production order. Worth running a few through your actual line rather than checking them by hand: fill speed and hot contents find fit problems that a desk check does not.

Send the current specification or a physical sample and we will quote to match it rather than proposing an alternative you would then have to re-approve internally. Tell us the coating on the pack you are matching too. Grease and moisture resistance are not visible in a sample and they change which stocks we can quote.

All 50 US states, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, on the same timeline everywhere: 3 to 5 business days of production after artwork approval, then 5 to 7 business days in transit. Every run is made to order and shipped directly to your address rather than pulled from stock, so you receive current production rather than whatever has been sitting in a warehouse. Freight is costed separately by weight, volume and destination. If stock is going into a kitchen or a service counter rather than a warehouse, tell us — case sizes that a single person can lift and store matter more there than pallet efficiency.

Every run is cut to your dimensions — there are no stock sizes here. Send the product measurements rather than a box size and we will build the food tray around them, then send a dieline template you can design onto.

We issue a dieline template sized to your product, prepress checks your artwork against it, and a proof comes back for sign-off. Nothing runs until you approve that proof, and food trays then take 3 to 5 business days.

Yes. Once a first run is approved we hold the board, structure, dimensions, print method and finishes against your account, so a reorder references the same specification exactly rather than being re-derived. The board and coating are held together, so a reorder cannot quietly arrive on a stock with different grease resistance.

Recycled grades are available across most of the substrates we run for food trays. Recycled content, curbside recyclability and certified compostability are three different claims though, so tell us which one you intend to print.