Printed Hot Dog Trays for Venues and Events

Board That Handles Sauce and Grease

Hot dogs mean mustard, ketchup, fried onions and hot fat from the sausage. A tray made from ordinary card soaks those up and goes limp. Our trays are made from a board with a grease-resistant coating on the food side, so they keep their shape for the length of a meal and the print on the outside stays clean.

White board gives the brightest print for sponsor logos and team colours. Kraft board suits street food, craft and market traders who want a natural look. Food-contact grade board is available on request, and it is worth asking for it if the sausage sits directly on the tray rather than in a bun. The grease-resistant boards are the same ones used on our closed hot dog boxes for delivery.

Designing Printed Hot Dog Trays

Most of the printed area on a tray is on the outer walls and the underside, with the inside largely covered by food. That means the side walls are where the brand or sponsor logo should go, sized to be visible when the tray is held. A strip of pattern or colour round the rim frames the food nicely in photos.

Keep the message short. Customers glance at the tray while eating, so a logo, a single line and perhaps a QR code are about as much as they will take in. If you are printing for a sponsor, check their brand guidelines for colour, clear space and minimum size before sending artwork, and we will lay it out to suit.

For a run of fixtures or a touring event, you can print several designs in one order, such as a different sponsor message for each stand or a different team colour for home and away. The free proof drawn on the tray dieline shows which areas end up under the food.

Sizing Your Trays

Measure the bun with the sausage in it and add your most generous topping. A standard hot dog roll is about 150 to 170 mm long, while jumbo rolls are around 200 mm and footlongs about 300 mm. The tray should be a few millimetres longer than the bun, with walls high enough to hold toppings but low enough that the hot dog can be picked up easily.

If you serve more than one size, two tray sizes are usually enough: one for standard and jumbo dogs, and one for footlongs or doubles. Keeping the range small makes stocking the kiosk easier on event days.

It is worth testing a sample tray with your actual hot dogs before the main run. Load it with your most generous build, carry it a short distance and see whether toppings stay put and whether the tray flexes. Small adjustments, such as a slightly higher end wall, are easy to make before printing and save a lot of mess once the trays are in use. The allowances are the same ones explained in our note on measuring a product for packaging.

Stocking a Busy Kiosk

Trays arrive flat or nested depending on style. Flat trays take up very little room in storage and fold up in a second; nested trays are pre-formed and come in stacks that can be grabbed straight from the sleeve. For high-volume venues, nested trays usually save time at the counter during half-time or interval rushes.

Store trays in their cartons in a dry room until they are needed. Damp storerooms can soften board before it is used, especially in older venues. It is worth keeping a spare carton of trays at each kiosk so staff never run out in the middle of service.

For venues with several kiosks, numbering cartons or printing the design name on the outer box helps staff send the right trays to the right stand. It sounds minor, but on a match day with three sponsor designs in rotation, a clearly marked carton saves arguments in the storeroom. Napkins and bags in the same print come from our takeaway and event food packaging so one delivery stocks the kiosk.

Load a Hot Dog Fully Before You Measure the Tray

Hot dog trays are sized from the loaded dog, not the bun, so build one with the most generous topping you serve, onions, cheese sauce and all, and measure its length, its width at the top and its height. Add 10 mm to the length and 5 mm to the width, and that is the inside of the tray. Two sizes cover almost every kiosk: one for standard and jumbo sausages, a longer one for footlongs. Decide whether chips go in the same tray, because that changes the shape entirely. Stadium caterers who serve the dog in a bun bag inside the tray order the printed hot dog bun bags from the same artwork.

Prepare the sponsor logos as vector files and keep the message to one line plus a QR code. Email the sizes, style, quantity per size and artwork and a custom quote comes back within one working day with a free design proof after it. Trays are made in 4 to 7 working days once approved and delivered free and tracked on the UK mainland in 2 to 3 days. Misprinted or crushed cartons reported within 10 days are reprinted or refunded.