Min. 100 units · 3–5 days
Kraft Meal Boxes
Custom Food Packaging
Specify thisCustom Food Packaging
Made-to-order salad Boxes in 12pt sbs paperboard, printed to your artwork and cut to your dimensions.
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Name, email, phone and what you are packing and the volumes you run. Attach artwork if you have it. We reply with a specification and a written price, usually within one business day.
Salad Boxes hold cold leaves with a dressing that must stay separate until the moment of eating. That is the starting point for the specification, because a small amount of ventilation and a moisture-tolerant base beat a fully sealed box for anything with leaves in it.
In service they are used for grab-and-go chillers and office delivery, packed early in the morning and eaten at midday.
Salad Boxes are specified for grab-and-go chillers and office delivery, packed early in the morning and eaten at midday. A small amount of ventilation and a moisture-tolerant base beat a fully sealed box for anything with leaves in it.
A moisture-tolerant base with slight ventilation. A fully sealed box wilts leaves faster than an open one.
The options we would consider for this format are below; a small amount of ventilation and a moisture-tolerant base beat a fully sealed box for anything with leaves in it.
A window sells freshness on a chiller shelf, and here it genuinely reflects the product rather than hiding it.
Offset lithography, Digital press, Flexography are all available for this format. Run length usually decides which is cheapest: digital removes the plate cost on short quantities, offset and flexo overtake it at volume.
A window sells freshness on a chiller shelf, and here it genuinely reflects the product rather than hiding it.
Every finish listed here is its own pass through the line, so each one is priced on its own rather than folded into a single figure.
Around 7 × 5 × 2½ in for a side, 9 × 6 × 3 in for a main, usually with a lid that clears the fill.
Send the contents rather than a box size. Buyers ask about leak resistance and never about ventilation, which is what actually determines whether the salad is still crisp at lunchtime.
Condensation from cold, damp leaves collects in the base and wilts the bottom layer within an hour.
Paperboard also absorbs moisture from the air until it equalises with its surroundings. If stock sits more than about six weeks in unconditioned space, a moisture-resistant coating is worth its small premium.
Supply artwork on the dieline we send you, with 3 mm bleed past every trim edge and all text held 4 mm inside the fold lines.
Supply a print-ready PDF or vector file with fonts outlined and images at 300 dpi. Our prepress team checks every file before a proof is issued. The check that catches most files is type sitting too close to a crease, which is easier to move at layout than at proof.
Start with dimensions and quantity. If you already run something similar, a physical sample tells us more in a minute than a specification does in a page.
A dieline template follows, sized to your product. Prepress checks your artwork against it and issues a proof; nothing runs until you sign that off.
Buyers ask about leak resistance and never about ventilation, which is what actually determines whether the salad is still crisp at lunchtime.
The rest of these come up often enough across the format to be worth stating plainly.
A plain structural sample is the cheapest way to find a fit problem — far cheaper than finding it across a full run.
Sample costs are normally credited against the production order.
Reference
| Product | Salad Boxes |
|---|---|
| Category | Custom Food Packaging |
| Construction | Die-cut, creased and seam-glued |
| Board thickness | 12pt – 18pt depending on product weight |
| Ships as | Flat-packed, glued one seam |
| Materials | 12pt SBS paperboard, 14pt SBS paperboard, 16pt SBS paperboard, 18pt kraft board |
| Printing | Offset lithography, Digital press, Flexography |
| Finishes | Gloss lamination, Matte lamination, Soft-touch lamination, Spot UV, Foil stamping |
| Minimum order | Minimum order is 100 units on any format, and unit cost falls sharply as the quantity rises. |
| Lead time | 3 to 5 business days after artwork approval |
| Shipping | Across the US, UK, Canada and Australia |
Specification builder
Set what you know, leave the rest. Everything here travels with your request, so nothing gets retyped.
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What you get
Around 7 × 5 × 2½ in for a side, 9 × 6 × 3 in for a main, usually with a lid that clears the fill.
Condensation from cold, damp leaves collects in the base and wilts the bottom layer within an hour.
Specified for grab-and-go chillers and office delivery, packed early in the morning and eaten at midday.
A small amount of ventilation and a moisture-tolerant base beat a fully sealed box for anything with leaves in it.
This format sits in our custom food packaging range, alongside 33 other made-to-order formats.
Answers
Specification, minimums and lead times for salad boxes.
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 salad boxes, 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.
Flat and glued along one seam, so they pop open on your packing line. That keeps freight cost down considerably compared with a pre-assembled structure.
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 folding cartons. Recycled content, kerbside 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 folding cartons 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. Folding carton 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.
Prices start from $0.30 per piece for large-volume orders. For this format the biggest levers are quantity, print route, board grade and how many finishing passes are involved. We quote each element separately so you can see where the money is going. 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 colour 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.
Related formats
Next step
Send the fill size and the volumes you run. We reply with a full specification and a written price, usually within one business day.