Cardboard Lunch Trays

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.

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 lunch 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.

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.

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.

A print-ready PDF or a vector file, with fonts outlined and any raster images at 300 dpi at final size. We supply the dieline to design onto, and prepress checks bleed, safe area and crease clearance before issuing a proof. The dieline we supply carries the crease positions, so keeping type clear of a crease is easier to solve at layout than at proof.

A flat 100 units on any format. Most food trays in this range are quoted from 100 units upward because unit cost falls sharply above that, but the minimum exists so you can validate a structure first.

3 to 5 business days after artwork approval, plus freight. Food tray runs with applied finishes can take longer because each finish is a separate pass, and we confirm a firm date in writing with the quote.

Ordered online, cardboard lunch 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.