The myth of laminated menus being cheaper

August 26 2026, by Vicky Anne Vaughan, 6 min reading time

The myth of laminated menus being cheaper

I went on a tour of some restaurants recently, and at least half of them were presenting their menus on laminated printed paper, in many cases looking tatty. Edges curling. The laminate scratched and cloudy from being wiped down one too many times. Corners peeling apart where the lamination had started to lift, letting moisture and bacteria creep in.

It left me feeling like: if they're skimping on presentation, what else are they skimping on?

Because here's the thing. Laminated menus have this reputation as the cheap, practical option. Print it, laminate it, done. But nobody actually sits down and works out what that costs over a year, or two, or five. So I did.

So I compared laminated menus against the cost of Peleman Premium Menu Covers, the durable kind you keep on the table for years, paired with plain paper inserts that slot inside. When the menu changes, you simply print a new insert page on your own desktop printer and swap it in. Same cover, new page, done in seconds.

If you can't be bothered to read the whole blog, here is the link to our online cost comparison calculator.

What I actually found

Using real quotes from UK printers, and comparing them against the investment in Peleman premium menu covers, five things became clear.

Return on investment in monetary terms for Peleman premium menu covers is typically within 2 to 3 years.
For a restaurant reprinting two to four times a year, that could mean around six complete reprints within this period. That’s six deliveries, plus the packaging and the disposal of the unwanted laminated menus to landfill, because the bit no one talks about is that laminated menus can't be recycled. See more about this below.

In comparison, the Peleman premium menu cover is shipped only once by sea and will last for many more years.
Complete reprints create a psychological barrier to changing your menu.
The very thought of the rigmarole and expense involved can put you off updating it as often as you should. That makes your business less flexible because you may delay introducing new dishes, adjusting prices or refreshing your offer, which can ultimately stall improvements to the guest experience.

Think about the restaurants you visit yourself. Don’t you get tired of seeing the same old things on the menu?
Your desktop-printed menu insert is immediately cheaper than a laminated menu from the very first one you print.
Printing an A4 insert in-house, paper and ink included, costs around £0.133 per menu. A single laminated A4 menu costs around £12.50, regardless of format. That's 7 to 94 times more than your printed insert, depending on the quantity you order. Even at a full 50-menu batch, the insert is still 4 to 7 times cheaper.

Obviously, a bare sheet of paper on its own wouldn't survive a night of service, spills and general wear. It'd look tatty within hours, exactly the problem we started with. The Peleman premium menu cover is what protects that cheap insert and makes it viable, so the saving above assumes the two together, not paper on its own.
And yes, in some combinations, it takes longer to break even.
The worst case we found was 9.6 years and 29 reprints: a premium A4 portrait slide-in cover (£21.58) compared with an A4 half-fold laminated menu, based on 50 menus.

But here’s the thing. Over those same 29 reprints, you’d create around 5.9kg of CO2e from deliveries and 35.9kg of landfill, because laminated menus cannot be recycled.

To put 35.9kg into hospitality terms, that’s not far off the weight of a full 30-litre beer keg. And in reality, the waste and carbon emissions would be higher because we haven’t even included the delivery packaging from those 29 reprints.
First impressions count, and as already stated above, many of the laminated menus I saw were tatty. Before we even touch on the cost to your brand identity, think of the bacteria guests are touching before they touch or eat their bread rolls. I just don't get it.

Restaurants invest heavily in interiors, food photography, signage, websites and service to create the right impression. If one of the first things a customer picks up feels tired, worn or cheap, it can undermine all of that work in seconds.

Work out your own numbers

Rather than ask you to take our word for any of this, we built a calculator. Pick your menu format, your quantity, your cover style and how often you reprint, and it'll show you exactly what you'd save in cost, carbon and landfill, using the same figures and formulas above.

Laminated Printed Menu vs Premium Menu Cover Cost Comparison Calculator

The bit nobody talks about: carbon and landfill

Laminated menus printed on both sides can't be recycled kerbside, and there really is no point in laminating menus on one side. The plastic film is fused to the paper. Even a light 27-micron film is enough to make the whole thing unrecyclable, so it all goes to landfill together. Every reprint. Every time.

We worked out that a double-sided laminated A4 menu is about 25g of paper and film that can never be separated, and an A3 menu roughly 50g. Scaled up across a typical reprint schedule, that's several kilograms of landfill waste a year, per restaurant, for something that could instead be a reused cover and a recyclable sheet of paper.

How we got to 25g: a 350gsm A4 sheet, a standard menu card weight, works out at 21.8g of paper. Add a 27-micron OPP laminate film, applied to both sides as most quotes specify, and that's another 3.1g. 21.8g + 3.1g = 24.9g, rounded to "about 25g" above.

There's a carbon cost too. Every reorder means another delivery. Using Royal Mail's own published parcel emissions figure, each reorder trip you skip by switching to a Peleman durable reusable cover saves roughly 205g of CO2e. Over a typical year of reprints, that adds up to the same as boiling the kettle for tea over a hundred times.

A quick honesty check on this point: our menu covers are a manufactured product too, built from durable materials designed for years of daily use. The carbon and landfill savings above reflect the repeated reprinting, packaging and delivery avoided by not replacing your menu every few months. It’s about Peleman long-life menu covers being reused for years rather than a repeated disposable cycle. We're not claiming the cover has zero footprint, just that reuse beats disposal.

The bottom line

Laminated menus feel cheap because you're only ever looking at one reprint at a time. Add up what a restaurant actually spends over a few years, factor in the landfill and the carbon of doing it again and again, and the maths tells a different story.

If your menus are looking a bit tired at the edges, it might be worth working out what that's really costing you. Not to mention tarnishing your brand.

E&OE. This post has been built with the best intent to give a fair, transparent comparison, using prices and figures sourced as noted throughout. If you spot an error, let us know and we'll correct it.