The folded paper pail with the wire handle, with your logo on white or kraft board. Small enough for a side of dumplings and big enough for a family portion, and the top folds shut so the noodles are still warm when they get home.
Your time is very important to us so we have kept it short.
Everybody in America knows the folded paper pail with the little wire handle. Lo mein, obviously. But these days custom Chinese takeout boxes get filled with poke and pasta and fried chicken, mac and cheese at a food truck, popcorn at a wedding, even party favors (we did a batch of those for a kid’s birthday once, cute). Restaurants order them from us, so do ghost kitchens and caterers, all after that familiar shape with their own name on the side.
Why’s the design stuck around so long? One sheet of board, folded, no glue on the bottom, and it barely leaks. The top flaps tuck shut. And you can eat straight out of it with chopsticks on the couch.
We size these by volume. Around 8 oz is the sides and sauces box, 16 oz is a single portion of rice or noodles, then 26 oz for a proper entree and 32 oz when two people are sharing. Go much bigger and the walls start bowing out under wet food, so we’d stop there.
Think about your heaviest dish. A 26 oz box of saucy noodles weighs way more than the same box full of fried rice, which honestly surprises people. Not sure? Ask us for a physical sample and fill it with the real thing.
Ever had a box go soggy at the corners before the driver even found your street? That’s an uncoated one. The inside of a decent paperboard takeout box has a coating, so the grease from a saucy stir-fry sits there for twenty minutes and doesn’t soak in. Send us the menu, we’ll sort the board out.
Steam, now, that one’s sneaky. You close the box tight, the heat stays in, lovely, and then the wings come out limp. We’d put a little vent on anything fried or just leave the top cracked open a bit. Noodles and rice are the opposite, flaps shut hard. Keep the wire handle on delivery orders too, it doubles as a lock.
Four tall panels is a lot of room. Most restaurants we work with just put the logo on two sides and the phone number or website on the other two, which works fine. One or two bold colors look sharp on white or kraft. If your brand’s built on illustrations, sure, go full color.
Poke shops and modern street food places lean kraft. White feels more classic. Either way our design team lays out the art for free and checks your files for problems before anything prints, and we use soy-based and water-based inks.
Our minimums are low, often around 50 boxes depending on the style, so a new food truck can try a design without a garage full of boxes. The price per box comes down as you order more, and most places move to bigger runs once they’ve settled on a size. Production is normally 10 to 12 business days after you approve the proof. Ground shipping’s free anywhere in the USA.
Doing a full delivery menu? Our custom fast food boxes and burger boxes pair up nicely with these, and for outer cartons there’s our guide to boxes for food delivery businesses. Plenty more in the food and beverage packaging range.
Not with a metal wire handle, no. If your customers tend to reheat leftovers in the box, we’d print a little note on the side telling them to use a plate.
The 26 oz, in most restaurants we see. Lunch portions and sides drop down to the 16 oz.
Not on a normal delivery run, the coating handles that. Leave a very wet curry sitting in one for a few hours though and the board will go soft.
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