Custom Food Boxes.

Settle four things first: whether the food is hot, how greasy it is, whether it travels, and whether it is eaten from the box. Hot decides venting. Grease decides the barrier grade. Travel decides stacking and closure. Eating from the box decides rigidity. Those answers point at a clamshell, an open tray, a gable carton or a compartment box.

One format rarely covers a whole menu, and we would rather quote you two or three than force everything into one.

A clamshell is a hinged lid on a base, the standard for hot takeaway at fast service. An open tray has no lid and vents continuously, which suits fried food eaten immediately. A gable carton has a peaked top and a built-in handle, so it carries a whole meal for events and meal deals.

All three fold from a flat blank and all three take the same board and barrier options.

By application, because fryer-temperature oil is a much harder case than warm grease from a sandwich. We specify the PFAS-free barrier grade against what goes in the box rather than putting one generic coating on everything. Light grease gets standard clay-coated board. Heavy fried product gets a hot-oil rated barrier or a greaseproof liner.

Getting this right is cheaper than over-specifying every box, and safer than under-specifying the greasy ones.

Kraft with one or two colour flexo is the standard across independent foodservice, and full CMYK suits chains and delivery-led brands. Inside print pays for itself on a lidded box because the customer sees it on opening. Matte lamination is available for chef-led operations that want a premium hand-feel.

Spot colour matching keeps one brand colour consistent across every format you use, and grease-tolerant ink keeps the print legible as the board takes oil.

The two common sizes are 6 x 4 x 3 inches for a single item and 9 x 6 x 3 inches for a full meal, and we cut custom sizes between and beyond those. Measurements are outside dimensions, length by width by height. Right-sizing matters on a closed box: too much headroom lets the contents slide, too little crushes them when the lid closes.

Send a portion and we will size the blank to it.

The floor is 500 boxes for each format and print. Where you want a clamshell and a tray from the same artwork, each is its own 500 because the dielines are different. Prices improve above 1,000 and the ceiling is 100,000 per order.

Artwork to dispatch is 7 to 10 business days on a standard schedule and 5 to 7 business days rushed. A food box sample is made up in 5 to 7 business days. We build the sample in the actual board and barrier, so you can fill it, close it and check the closure with food inside, as it will be used.

The sample fee is set against the production invoice.

Moulded fibre is the compostable choice, with deep compartments and an end of life in food waste. Kraft, clay-coated and E-flute boxes are fibre-based and recyclable as paper where lightly soiled, and the PFAS-free barrier keeps them compliant in states that restrict the chemistry.

Tell us which claim you want to make on the box and we will match the stock to it, and only print the mark where the material carries certification.