If you run a bar and you want your logo on a coaster, you have three real options: a promotional products site, a print shop, or a packaging manufacturer. They differ by minimum, by price per coaster, and by how long you wait. Most bars pick wrong because they only ask about price.
Here is how to work out which one fits, and what to send when you ask.
Quick answers
Promotional sites. A few hundred coasters, fast, highest price per unit.
Local print shop. Small runs on card, not pulpboard. Looks fine dry, curls wet.
Manufacturer. Proper pulpboard from 5,000, or 500 for a die cut shape, lowest per-unit cost, 6 to 8 weeks by sea.
The thing nobody asks about and should: board thickness.
Work out your volume
Count drinks served in an average week, not a Saturday. If you put a coaster under most of them, that is roughly your coaster use.
A bar doing 600 drinks a week goes through something like 30,000 coasters a year if every drink gets one, or nearer 15,000 if it is one per table rather than per glass. Either way a 5,000 run is months, not years.
That is the thing worth knowing: coasters turn over faster than almost any other printed item in a bar. Unlike cups, where a 10,000 minimum can be two years of stock for a small cafe, a 5,000 coaster run is usually a few months. The minimum is rarely the blocker it looks like.
The 500-piece door
Standard shapes, round and square, run at a minimum of 5,000.
Die cut shapes run at 500. Cut to any outline you supply, a bottle silhouette, a hexagon, your logo mark.
Five hundred is low enough to be a real order rather than a commitment. For a bar opening, a one-off event, a seasonal cocktail launch, or simply testing whether branded coasters do anything for you, that is the way in. It is the lowest minimum on anything we print.
If you want something custom on your bar this month without carrying stock, start there.
Board thickness is the spec that matters
This is where most first orders go wrong, because it is the one thing people leave off the brief.
A proper coaster is pulpboard, a bulky absorbent board made to soak up condensation and hold together while wet. Thin board is cheaper and behaves like it. Under a cold glass on a warm night it swells, curls at the corners, and starts breaking down within one service. Guests pick at the edges. By last orders the bar looks tired.
Thicker board costs a little more per unit and stays flat all night.
For a bar where coasters go out under every drink, pay the difference. The gap in price is small and the difference in how the room reads is not. For a single event, thinner board is perfectly defensible, because nobody is judging it on night two.
Tell your supplier what the coaster is actually for and ask them to recommend a thickness against that use. That is a better brief than naming a number you found somewhere.
What drives the price
Shape. Standard round or square is cheapest. A die cut needs its own tooling.
Thickness. More board, more cost.
Colours. One or two colours on natural pulpboard is the cheapest printed coaster there is. Full coverage costs more and, on an absorbent board, often looks worse.
One side or two. The back of a coaster is the most underused space in any bar. A cocktail list, opening hours, a QR code to the menu. It costs less than people assume, because the sheet is already going through the press.
Quantity. Once the spec is fixed, more units brings the per-unit price down. Ask for two or three quantities so you can see what the next tier saves.
What to ask any supplier
Three questions make quotes comparable.
Is this pulpboard or card? Card is cheaper and is not a coaster. If the answer is vague, it is card.
Is the price ex-works or delivered? Ex-works excludes freight and duty. Normal in this trade, but an ex-works price and a landed price are not comparable numbers.
What thickness, in actual units? "Premium" is not a specification.
What we do
Pulpboard coasters printed to your artwork, 5,000 for standard round and square, 500 for die cut shapes, one side or two. Bar mats are a separate item if you are kitting out the rail as well as the tables.
Pricing comes back at two or three quantities within two business days. Production runs 6 to 8 weeks by sea. Prices are ex-works, so freight and duty are quoted alongside the unit price rather than buried in it. We publish real per-unit numbers for the cannabis lines we run most on our pricing page, and you will get the same directness on a coaster quote.
Send the shape, the size, the quantity, whether you want one side or two, and what the coaster is for. That is enough to price it.
Where to go next
For shapes, thicknesses and bar mats, see custom bar coasters.
The fuller spec guide is custom bar coasters: thickness, shapes and minimums, which covers why pulpboard behaves the way it does and what artwork survives printing on it.
If you are dressing the whole bar, napkin sizes and ply explained covers the other item worth printing, and custom food packaging covers the range.
