How to Size a Custom Drip Tray (and Price It in 60 Seconds)

We build custom drip trays every day in our Trois-Rivières workshop, and the most common question we get isn't about steel or welds — it's "what size do I actually need?" Here's the same sizing logic we use on the shop floor, in four steps. And when you're done reading, you won't need to email anyone for a price: our online tray builder shows the exact price live as you configure your tray.

Step 1 — Nail down the width

We build any width from 12″ up to 100″, in any 0.25″ increment. Not "closest stock size" — the exact width your counter and tower layout call for. A 47.75″ tray costs what a 47.75″ tray should cost, and it fits like it was made for the bar, because it was.

Start from your tower layout, not from a catalog. The tray should cover the full pour zone under every faucet, plus room for whatever else lives in it — drains and glass rinsers each need breathing room (more on that in Step 3). If you're replacing an existing tray, measure the old one and ask yourself where it fell short: too narrow for the new tower? No room for a rinser? Fix it now, while width is free to choose.

One number to keep in mind: minimum price is $150 for any design, so even a compact 12″ tray for a two-tap setup is a small, known investment.

Step 2 — Pick your depth and style

Depth is mostly decided by how the tray meets the counter. We build four styles:

If you're building a bar from scratch and can plan the cutout, recessed or X-Pressed gives the cleanest look. If the counter is already finished, a standard surface-mount tray is the zero-drama answer. And if your tower needs a mounting base anyway, a platform tray solves both problems with one piece of stainless. You can compare all four in our drip tray collection.

Step 3 — Place your drains and glass rinsers

This is where most DIY sizing goes wrong, so here are the exact rules we build to:

• Up to 3 drains and up to 2 glass rinsers per tray.
• A glass rinser needs at least one drain — the rinse water has to go somewhere.
• Keep 2″ of clearance between elements, and between any element and the ends of the tray.
• A glass rinser occupies a 6″ footprint.

Those rules set your real minimum width. Two rinsers, for example, already claim 12″ of footprint plus 2″ between them and 2″ at each end — before you've placed a single drain. This is exactly why we built the tray builder: you drag drains and rinsers into place, the builder enforces the spacing rules for you, and the price updates live with every move.

A word on grille inserts

The grille (the removable perforated insert your glasses sit on) follows its own logic: inserts are always equal lengths, maxing out around 36″ each, up to 5 inserts per tray. A split is never placed on top of a glass rinser — when the math would land one there, we add an insert instead. You don't have to compute any of this; we handle it in every design.

Step 4 — Choose your finish

Brushed stainless is the standard, and for a wet, high-traffic surface it's the finish we recommend most. If the bar design calls for it, we powder coat for +$125 in Matte Black, Gold, Copper, or White.

Honest note from the shop: powder coating on a drip tray can chip over time — it's a surface that takes glassware impacts all day. We do our best to maximize coating adhesion, but if you want a finish that looks the same in year five, stay with brushed stainless.

How the price works

No mystery quote here. Price scales with tray area (width × depth), plus the equivalent of $95 per glass rinser and $35 per drain baked into the builder's live price. Powder coat adds its flat $125, and nothing goes below the $150 minimum. Because the formula is deterministic, the builder can show you the exact number in real time — no "request a quote and wait two days" for a standard custom tray.

Need something the builder can't express — an unusual shape, a special mounting condition, an integrated project? Send it through our quote page and we'll engineer it. Outfitting multiple venues or buying for resale? Our trade program covers volume pricing.

Built to order, guaranteed for life

Every tray is made to order in our Trois-Rivières workshop and built in 5 to 15 business days, with a lifetime warranty on welds. We build these daily for bars, restaurants, and breweries across the country — yours won't be the strangest size we've seen this month.

So: measure your width, pick your style, count your drains and rinsers. Then open the tray builder, drag your elements into place, and you'll have your exact price on screen in about 60 seconds.