Count the lid lines on your shelf. If the number is close to the number of container sizes you sell, you are holding more stock than you need to, and every one of those lines is a thing that can run out separately on a Saturday.
One lid, three containers
Glossy white paper to-go lids are sized to fit 8, 12 and 16 oz paper containers. One line covers a half-pint, a mid-size and a full pint, which is the whole takeaway ladder most shops actually sell.
The saving is not really money. It is shelf space, reorder attention, and the number of ways a busy evening can go wrong. Three container lines and one lid line is a system a new member of staff can hold in their head. Three and three is a system where someone eventually seals a 12 oz with an 8 oz lid.
Watch the case counts, they do not match
This catches people out. The lids come five hundred to a case. The containers they fit come a thousand.
So one case of containers needs two cases of lids, and a shop that orders one of each in good faith runs out of lids at the halfway point with a full case of containers still sitting there. Order in a two-to-one ratio from the start and the problem never arises.
Choosing the finish
The same lid exists in glossy white, glossy black and a compostable white, all at the same case price. Since the cost is identical, the decision is entirely about what the rest of your counter looks like.
Glossy white is the neutral choice and takes a sticker or a stamp cleanly, which matters if you brand your takeaway by hand rather than by print. Black coordinates with dark containers and dark spoons for shops running a monochrome presentation. The compostable version matters only if your containers are compostable too, and only for the reasons we went into in compostable pints for takeaway, which is that a compostable container under a plastic lid has not achieved anything.
Where the shared lid stops
It does not cover everything, and it is worth knowing the edges before you build a range around it.
The 5 oz container has its own lid, also five hundred to a case, because the smallest takeaway size sits below the shared range. Plastic pint containers take their own plastic lids rather than these paper ones. And this is a flat lid rather than a domed one, so anything mounded above the rim needs a different profile entirely, for the reasons set out in dome or flat lids.
Building the range backwards
The usual approach is to pick containers and then find lids for them. Try it the other way once. Start from the shared lid, take the three container sizes it already fits, and you have a complete takeaway range with a single line to reorder.
Add a size outside that set only when a customer has asked for it more than once. Every lid line sits together in the lids and domes range, and the fastest way to simplify a cluttered shelf is to see which of your containers already share one.