Custom Acrylic Menu Holders

The holder is sized to the menu card, not the other way around. Our most-ordered formats are A4 (210×297mm), A5 (148×210mm), DL (99×210mm — the tall narrow card most bars use for drinks lists), half-letter (5.5×8.5in) and US letter (8.5×11in). The internal slot is cut 1–2mm wider than the insert on each side so staff can drop a new menu in without catching a corner. Non-standard cards — die-cut, folded bi-fold, square, oversized brunch boards — are quoted from your dimensions with no size surcharge.

The construction overlaps; the job doesn't. A menu holder lives on a dining table, bar top, or hostess stand and gets handled by guests and servers many times a day, so it is specified for stability under HVAC drafts, fast insert swapping, and daily degreaser wipe-down. A sign holder presents a fixed message — price cards, wayfinding, compliance notices, shelf-edge tags — and is usually set once and left alone. If your insert is signage rather than a menu, our custom acrylic sign holders page covers slant-back, wall-mounted and floor-standing sign formats.

Most chains end up with two or three formats rather than one. A T-style or tent holder goes on the dining table because both sides of a four-top can read it. A slant-back or L-shape holder goes on the bar and the counter because it takes less depth and does not block sightlines. A floor-standing or hostess-stand holder carries the A3 or A4 board at the entrance. Order them as one program under a single design so the base thickness, edge finish, and branding match across all three — that is what makes a dining room look coordinated rather than assembled from catalogs.

Base mass and base footprint, in that order. A thicker cast acrylic base lowers the center of gravity and resists the airflow coming off ceiling diffusers, which is the usual cause of table-top wobble in restaurants. Widening the base footprint relative to the insert height does the rest. On the 85-location chain rollout documented in our case study, moving the table-top holder from a 5mm base to a 12mm weighted base held the unit well under the 3° tilt threshold the client set. Tell us the insert size and where the unit sits, and we spec base thickness and footprint on the quote.

Yes — three methods, and they price differently. Silk-screen printing on the base or front panel is the most common for restaurant rollouts: a flat setup fee plus a low per-unit cost, best for one or two flat colors. UV printing handles full-color logos and gradients with no screen setup, which suits shorter runs and multi-brand groups. Laser engraving cuts the mark into the acrylic itself so it never wears off under degreaser — the choice when the holder has to look the same in year three as on day one. Send artwork as vector (AI, EPS, or PDF) and we mock it up on the sample.

No — do not run them through a commercial dishwasher. A machine cycle pairs sustained heat with the aggressive detergents foodservice machines use, and that combination stress-crazes acrylic into permanent hairline cracks over repeated washes. What acrylic does handle is the routine every restaurant actually uses: a damp cloth with mild soap, or the standard front-of-house degreaser on a wipe-down pass. Cast acrylic carries higher chemical resistance than extruded, which is why we spec cast for foodservice pieces, and hand flame-polished edges hold up to that wipe-down cycle better than machine-buffed edges, which go hazy.

Yes, and it is now the most requested configuration in hospitality. Two builds work. A double-sided T-style holder puts the printed menu on one face and the QR code on the reverse, so the same unit serves guests who want paper and guests who want to scan. A slotted holder carries the full menu in the main channel and a small QR card in a second shallow slot at the base, which lets the venue reprint the QR card alone when the payment link changes. Both use replaceable inserts, so a new QR code never means new hardware.

MOQ is 100 pieces per design. A paid sample ships in 3–5 days and production runs 15–20 days after you approve it. Mixed programs count per design, not per order: an A5 table tent, a DL bar menu holder, and an A4 hostess-stand board run as three designs of 100 in the same shipment and on the same production window, packed and labeled per SKU so store managers do not have to sort them. Bonded multi-panel builds add 2–3 days for solvent-bond cure; silk-screen or UV branding adds 1–2 days.

Our own plant. Wetop has run the same Shenzhen factory since 2008 — today 5,000 m², ISO 9001 certified, 65+ workers, 2,000+ custom projects — and cutting, heat bending, slot routing, edge polishing, printing, and inspection all happen on that floor. So when you ask whether a 12mm base is enough for a DL bar menu holder on a windy patio, the answer comes back from the person who will bend and polish it.

We quote per design rather than publishing a catalog price, because the levers move the number a long way. The five that matter most are insert size (an A4 hostess board uses several times the material of a DL bar card), acrylic thickness and base mass (a 12mm weighted base costs more than a 3mm bent panel), construction method (one-piece heat-bent is cheapest; bonded multi-slot and tent builds add fabrication steps), branding method (silk-screen, UV print, or laser engraving), and quantity. Send the format, size, and target quantity and we come back within 24 hours with a line-itemized quote you can compare against other suppliers.

Usually yes, from photos and dimensions alone — no CAD file needed. Send a few photos with a ruler or a known object in frame, the insert size, and the acrylic thickness if you can measure it. We rebuild the geometry, confirm the tilt angle and slot clearance, and produce a sample against your existing unit so you can hold the two side by side before committing. This is the normal path for chains replacing units store by store rather than all at once.