Custom Four Corner Trays

Choosing Board for the Job

Folding boxboard trays suit lighter dry goods and catering, and they take crisp full colour print. For heavier loads and stacking, E-flute or B-flute corrugated is the safer choice; the flutes give the walls more crush resistance and the corner posts carry more weight. Produce trays sometimes use kraft corrugated with a plain look, which shrugs off the odd damp leaf or soil mark.

Where food sits directly on the tray, food-contact grade board is available on request, and a grease-resistant coating helps with pastries, fried snacks or anything buttery. If your trays go into chilled cabinets, mention it so we can suggest a coating that copes with condensation.

Stacking and Nesting

Stackability is the reason many buyers choose this tray. When the corner posts are slightly taller than the products inside, a second tray can sit on the posts without touching the food underneath. That is useful for catering platters and fruit, where you want height on a display without pressure on the bottom layer. We can set the post height a few millimetres above your product height for exactly this purpose.

Some trays are also designed with a small lock tab or a lid that fits over the posts, turning the tray into a closed box for delivery. Others have a hand hole cut in the end walls so staff can lift a full stack safely. p1 Clear lids for display are shown on our four corner display lids page.

Sizing Trays for Shelves, Trolleys and Vans

Start with what goes in and how it is arranged. For catering, think in terms of portions: how many sandwiches or pastries per tray, laid flat or on edge. For produce, think about the punnets or loose fruit you want to fit. Then measure the space the tray will live in, such as a display chiller shelf, a trolley or the boot of a delivery van, and work to a footprint that fits several trays side by side without gaps.

Wall height usually sits between 40 and 100 mm. Lower walls show more of the product on a counter; higher walls keep loose items contained during transport. We will check your proposed size against these points and suggest adjustments on the proof.

Caterers who use four corner trays every day tend to settle on a small family of sizes that share a footprint. A half-size tray and a full-size tray that sit neatly side by side on a trolley make loading quicker and stop trays sliding around in a van. If you already use standard catering trolleys or chiller shelves, give us those internal measurements and we will design around them.

Another tip is to think about how trays come back. Some caterers collect empty trays after events, while others treat them as single use. If yours come back, a slightly heavier board and a wipe-clean coating extend their life. If they are single use, a lighter board saves money with no loss in performance.

Finally, store flat trays somewhere dry and away from ovens or steam. Corrugated board softens in a humid kitchen, and a tray that has absorbed moisture loses some of the stacking strength that made you choose it in the first place. p4 The guide to measuring a product for a box covers working from a shelf size backwards.

Printing Your Trays

A plain tray works perfectly well, but print turns it into a small advert. Catering firms print their name and contact details along the side walls so every platter delivered to an office carries their details back into the room. Bakeries use a repeating pattern or logo. Retail shelf trays carry the product range name on the front lip where shoppers see it.

Full colour printing suits white board and white-lined corrugated. One or two spot colours on kraft keeps costs lower and looks natural. Printing the inside base is also possible, which shows through between products and looks good on cookie and pastry trays.

Keep text away from the corner posts, where folds and glue lines can interrupt it. p2 Grease-resistant liners for the base are covered on our printed greaseproof paper page.

Give Us the Trolley Shelf Size, Not Just the Tray

Four corner trays live on trolleys, chiller shelves and van floors, so the measurement that saves most trouble is the space they sit in. Measure the internal width and depth of your trolley shelf or chiller, tell us how many trays should fit side by side, and we size a footprint that fills it without gaps; a half-size and a full-size that share one dimension pack a van far better than two unrelated sizes.

Then say what goes in and how tall it stands, because the corner posts are cut a few millimetres above the product so a stacked tray never touches the food. Say whether the trays come back after events, which decides the board weight. The custom quote arrives by email within one working day, with the minimum set per job.

The free proof shows the flat blank and the folded tray with the post height marked. Production takes 4 to 7 working days after approval and the pre-glued trays reach UK mainland addresses flat by free tracked delivery. Caterers who need a closed version add our foot-lock trays with a fitted lid in the same print.