Bar Runner / Counter Mat Styles + Sizes

STYLE 1 - Borderless Counter Mats / Vape Mats
Borderless Counter or bar mats are made form either 1mm, 2mm or 3mm natural rubber, this has a spongy feel to it and make it easy to pick small items up from counter tops which makes them popular as customised jewellery mats in jewellery stores.

They are then lined with a printed fabric top to create the customised design.  They are incredibly popular with bars and shops alike.  They are also able to be finished with a wipe clean surface, this is popular in Vape shops.  Branded Vape Mats are able to be wiped clean from any drips.
 

Borderless Bar Runner Sizes

Small: 410mm x 220mm
Medium: 600mm x 190mm

Large: 820mm x 210mm
Bespoke: Any Bespoke Size or Shapes Are Also Available

 

STYLE 2 - Premium Bordered Bar Runners
Premium Bordered Bar Runners are probably the most popular bar runner available on the market today.  They have a absorbent fabric top with a 1mm black nitrile rubber non slip backing.  This make for very easy cleaning and they sit very fat on the bar. 

Premium Bordered Bar Runner Sizes

Small: 434mm x 234mm
Medium: 600mm x 190mm

Large: 894mm x 244mm
Bespoke: Any Bespoke Size or Shapes Are Also Available


STYLE 3 - Moulded PVC Bar Top Drip Mats
Moulded PVC are the most premium bar runners available on the market.  They have deep recesses which will catch a vast quantity of drips from drinks.  They are able to be fully customised with your specific requirements or you can select from a standard range of sizes and recess pattern which will help significantly reduce cost and lead times whilst still creating an eye catching bar top mat.

 

 

Why Get Custom Bar Runners?
Every pub or bar you go into the world over will almost certainly have some form of custom bar runner or counter mat. Not only do they serve a functional purpose of absorbing the drips coming from freshly poured drinks, but from a marketer's point of view, they also present an outstanding branding opportunity.  

Picture the scene, a busy Saturday night, a bar packed full with potential customers for your company's drink.  The indecisive clientele of the bar approach the bar to be presented with your brand in bright vibrant colours right before they are served by the bar staff.  

Now, it's not going to make everyone in the bar buy your drink just because you have a well placed counter mat, but it certainly does tick some boxes on the advertiser's hand book - advertising to potential customer at point of sale.  Short of actually getting the bar staff to actively promote your drink at the bar, you can't get your message much more to your customers at point of use that a custom bar runner.

 

Like with most advertising or branding opportunities, it needs to be done well otherwise it may actually put off your customers.  This is where great design is key.  You need to give your designers a nice solid brief about the message you want it to portray.  Think, images of ice cold beers or fizzing G&Ts and you're getting somewhere close.  It needs to have appeal to the bar goers if it'll ever help you increase sales.  But of course, this applies to all your advertising, not just custom bar runners or counter mats.  

 

With the dye sublimation printing process you are able to get very punchy designs so let your creativity run wild.  

There are different styles for different occasions, you can get fabric counter mats with a black rubber non-slip backing, or you can do borderless custom bar runners which are thicker and benefit from a lower minimum order quantity.  At the other end of the spectrum, your can do full rubber moulded bar runners which have rubber spikes or dimples which allow spills to run down into the catch tray rather than being absorbed.  

The moulded rubber bar runners tend to have higher order volumes and are more for larger drink brand roll outs to hundreds of bars at the same time, they do come with a higher price ticket due to being custom moulded, but the lifespan of these bar runners is much higher, so long as your marketing team don't get bored of the style and decide to re-brand.

 

Possible Uses For Printed Counter Mats?

Counter mats don't need to only be for generic drink marketing, you could tie the design into specific events.  Think Wimbledon, or the World Cup - these are events which tend to bring out higher numbers of bar goers which could present a good opportunity to trial a new drinks range or different slant on a marketing message or you could tie a particular drink into the event itself.  Strawberry and cream daiquiri anyone? 

Another potentially useful way you could use custom bar runners it to run split tests or A/B tests.  You could have two different designs of counter mat printed each with different imagery and different sales message and distribute type A to one group of bars and type B to a different group of bars.  If you then monitor at which bars your drinks have been selling better, then you know the most effective design.  You can then take the most popular design and hone and tweak it to make it even more effective.

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If you are launching a wide scale new brand you could also tie in different promotional items to have an all encompassing approach to sales.  Along with the custom bar runners, you could also distribute lanyards for the bar staff, printed T-shirts for the bar staff to wear, beer mats for each table, and even some little postcards or flyers to sit at the bar all of which can be printed with your message to help drive sales. 

That's just thinking inside the bar, outside the bar you could have banners and posters to draw in new members of the public who may not have even been thinking about coming into the bar to sample one of your drinks.  If you're at an event or country fayre, you could have custom flags to draw people from further away or a branded tent to host your bar.  

Custom bar runners may just be the start of ways you can promote your brand, but they certainly are a great place to start.


Technical Information

Print Area

You are able to fully brand right to the edge of the area stated above, albeit on the square mats they will have a 1mm black rubber border.  

Printing 

Full colour counter mats are printed using dye sublimation.  This is a process where a full colour transfer is applied to a base fabric creating a bright, vibrant, long lasting and fast method of printing on to fabric.

File Type / Resolution

All files should be supplied as print ready PDFs set to print at 300dpi or above. 

To get a quote for your own custom bar runners, just use the live chat to speak to an exert immediately or send an email directly to the team on barmats@claroprint.co.uk