Catering Tray with Lid
The lidded catering tray is the format that most drop-off caterers standardise on, because it is the only one that solves the whole journey.
View tray & get pricing →Custom Printed Food Trays
Custom Printed Catering Trays
- Lid and base printed separately
- Header board option
- Proof before production
Catering is the one part of food service where packaging routinely converts new business. A tray arrives at an office, gets opened in front of a dozen people, and half of them are potential customers who will ask who catered it. If your name is not on the tray, they ask the person who ordered — and often do not get an answer.
This page is about doing that properly: what to print, where, and how much it actually costs.
- Lid, base and header board are separate print surfaces
- One-colour on kraft is inexpensive and effective for volume drop-offs
- Full-colour lids for retail and premium event work
- Cutting dies retained, so seasonal designs only carry plate cost
Pricing starts from $0.30 per tray
The unit price depends on the size, board, printing, finishing, quantity and delivery country, so every quote is worked out for your specification rather than taken from a list.
Get pricing for custom printed catering trays
Send the size and the run length. We reply with pricing, material options and a production date — usually within one working day.
01 — Specification
Specification at a glance
Every element below is set when we quote. Nothing here is a fixed catalogue entry — if a line does not match what you need, say so and we will change it.
- Print surfaces
- Lid face, lid edge, base side walls, header board, lid interior
- Colours
- 1–4 spot colours, or CMYK on bleached board
- Substrates
- Kraft and white E and B flute, bleached folding board
- Proofing
- Digital proof included; physical proof recommended for first runs
- Repeat orders
- Die retained; new artwork carries plate cost only
02 — Build the spec
Design this tray in five steps
The same five questions we would ask on a phone call, with the custom printed catering tray already selected. You get a properly detailed brief at the end, which is what makes a first quote accurate rather than approximate.
Prefer the full builder with a live sketch? Open the tray designer.
03 — In detail
Where to put what
A catering tray gives you four or five distinct surfaces, and they get seen at different moments. Use them for different things.
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Lid face — who you are
Seen while the tray is still closed, from across a room. Name, mark, one line of positioning. Set it large; this is a room-reading surface, not a hand-reading one.
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Lid interior — what happens next
Seen only after opening, by the people about to eat. Menu, allergen note, reheating guidance, a QR code to reorder. Nobody minds detail here because they are already engaged.
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Base side walls — how to find you
Still visible once the lid is off and the tray is on the table for an hour. Website, ordering line, social handle.
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Header board — the buffet-line surface
If your trays go onto a buffet, this stands above the food at eye level. It is the single most visible panel on the whole product.
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Lid edge — the stacked view
When trays are stacked in a van or on a counter, the edge is all anybody sees. A repeated wordmark along it is cheap and surprisingly effective.
How much printing do you actually need?
Volume drop-off catering
One colour on kraft, on the lid and one side wall. It is inexpensive enough that you can print every tray you use, which matters more than the finish quality — a plain tray at every delivery loses more business than a slightly less refined printed one.
Corporate and premium events
Two or three spot colours, or full colour on a white lid. The audience is judging you on presentation and the order values justify the cost. This is where a physical proof is worth the extra few days.
Retail-facing catering ranges
Full colour, with a legal panel, barcode and product photography. Effectively a retail pack, and it needs to be designed as one rather than as a catering tray with extra ink.
Design on the dieline, not on a rectangle. Catering trays have lid overlaps, fold lines, hand holes and sometimes a header fold. Every one of those is somewhere a logo can end up creased or cut in half. We supply the dieline free before artwork starts — use it.
What the printing costs, roughly
Print cost on a catering tray divides into setup and running. Setup is fixed — plates and make-ready — and is paid once per design per surface. Running cost is the ink, and it is small. That means the unit cost of printing falls sharply with quantity, and the practical question is not "can I afford to print" but "how quickly do I use trays".
A caterer doing twenty drop-offs a week will get through enough trays in a quarter to make one-colour printing cost a few cents per tray. Ask us for pricing at your realistic quarterly and annual usage and the decision usually makes itself.
04 — Nearby
Trays that work alongside this one
Chosen because operators who buy the custom printed catering tray usually need one of these in the same order, not because they happen to sit in the same category.
Corrugated Catering Tray
This is the working catering tray: fluted, deep, strong enough to hold several full foil pans, and usually built with a raised header board that turns t…
View tray & get pricing →
Custom Printed Food Tray
This is the general-purpose printed tray: any of our shapes, in your board, carrying your artwork.
View tray & get pricing →
Corrugated Party Tray with Lid
A party tray is a divided platter under a clear lid.
View tray & get pricing →05 — Questions
Custom Printed Catering Tray questions
What is the cheapest way to brand a catering tray?
One colour on natural kraft, on the lid face. It is the lowest setup cost, it looks deliberately plain rather than cheap, and at catering volumes it works out to a very small amount per tray. Most operators should start there.
Can the lid and the base be printed differently?
Yes. They are separate components with separate tooling and separate plates. The most common pattern is branding on the lid and practical information — menu, allergens, reheating — on the base or inside the lid.
Do you supply a dieline before artwork?
Always, and free. Designing a catering tray without one is the single most common cause of a reprint, because lids have overlaps and bases have folds that are not obvious from a photograph.
How accurate is colour on kraft board?
Spot colours on natural kraft shift warm because the brown substrate shows through every ink. We will show you what your specific colour actually does on that board. If exact colour matters, a white lid on a kraft base is a common and effective compromise.
Should I get a physical proof?
For a first branded catering run, yes. A digital proof catches typos and layout errors; only a physical proof on the actual board tells you how the colour and the surface will really look under an office fluorescent light.
Can I run different designs for different clients?
Yes. The cutting die is shared, so additional designs carry plate cost only. Caterers with a few large contract clients often run a house design plus one or two client-specific versions.
How long does artwork approval usually take?
Longer than production, in our experience — it is usually the client side that stretches a timeline, not the press. Start the design conversation early and build in time for a second set of eyes on the proof.
Can you print allergen information for me?
We will print whatever you supply, on a clearly defined panel we mark on the dieline. What the panel must say is a legal question that differs between the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and that content has to come from you.
Is printed ink in contact with the food?
Not on a standard tray — print is applied to the outer face. Where interior print is requested we specify inks appropriate for that application and note it on your specification.
Do you print QR codes?
Yes, and inside the lid is the best place for one, because the customer is already looking at the food when they see it. Test the code at final print size before approval — codes that scan on screen sometimes fail at small sizes on textured board.
Before you order, read
- Food Tray Printing Guide — Colours, costs, substrates and proofs — what buyers need to know.
- Artwork Guide for Printed Food Trays — File formats, bleed, safe areas and dieline setup for designers.
- Catering Tray Buying Guide — Specifying catering packaging that survives the whole delivery journey.
Who buys this tray
Ready to price the custom printed catering tray?
Send the dimensions, the quantity and the country you want it delivered to. We come back with a full quote — material, print, finishing, freight and a production date.