So you need a pan rack cover (or 100 pan rack covers). Bun pan rack covers serve a variety of purposes and choosing one should be based on your use case combined with your constraints. Your major considerations are typically going to be Durability, Transparency/Translucency (can you look inside it with it closed), Breathability (Do you want it to allow air flow), Temperature Range (will it see freezer use), Insulation Ability & of course Budget.
Durability: Durability is determined by material type & quality of construction. In general, Material Types are going to be Non-Reinforced & Reinforced Vinyl. The reinforcement is typically a polyester scrim within the vinyl fabric that helps to stop rips/tears (sometimes called ripstop) & significantly enhances material durability. There is a further breakdown of reinforced vinyl into Coated & Laminated which refers to the construction process of the vinyl. Laminated vinyl is typically slightly less expensive & is manufactured by sandwiching the reinforcement scrim with two thin sheets of the vinyl and then bonding the sheets together to create the finished product. Coated Vinyl is made by flooding the scrim with liquid vinyl. Laminated products are a little less durable in certain environments (such as truck tarps where they are flapping as they go down the road) as they can delaminate where coated products cannot. That said, we use coated products for all reinforced vinyl (with the exception of translucent which is only made with a laminated process) as it is a little more durable. Quality of Construction is determined by your manufacturer and included design & assembly quality. Design can involve the selection of ancillary materials (zipper, quality of thread, quality of binding material) as well as whether or not the manufacturer adds additional reinforcement. Most covers will first show issues in the top corners and as such it is wise to add a reinforcing corner patch to the top to extend the life of the cover. Similarly, we design our clear vinyl doors to have a reinforced translucent vinyl trim to add durability to the clear door. These details add 5-10% to the cost to manufacture, but typically adds at least 40% to the life of the cover and is a wise investment (thus, we add this corner patch to all covers with reinforced tops on reinforced covers and we reinforce our clear doors for our reinforced vinyl covers). Similarly, because the top is typically the weakest link, it is often wise to have a translucent reinforced top on a clear vinyl cover which we do for all the clear covers we make domestically in our shops as we believe the slight additional cost is a worthwhile investment for our customers. Of course, the person making the cover and quality of equipment is extremely important in the end product quality and we invest heavily in both using only high end Juki machines with well trained local staff that take pride in making quality covers.
Transparency: This is pretty clear (ha) issue, if you want to let light in you need at least translucency, & if you want to see through you need transparency. We offer a variety of translucency/transparency options to cover all of your needs on this.
Breathability: This is a rather specific characteristic, there are times where you need to specifically keep possible bugs or other contamination off of the finished product but still let it breathe (typically bread after baking where you want the crust to maintain a certain crispness). For these our Mesh covers are the ideal solution.
Temperature Range: This is rather specifically related to if the cover will see freezer duty. If it will see freezer duty you need a cold crack rating suitable for how cold the freezer use scenario will be, in general you will want at least a -20 cold crack rating and you will find that the reinforced vinyls perform much better in this regard than the clear/transparent vinyl covers.
Insulation Ability: This is a more special use scenario, but perhaps you want to maintain a more stable temperature gradient within your cover such as when proofing bread. We offer insulated covers on a custom order basis to help with this.
Budget: You’re running a business, of course this is a driving factor once you have met the other needs above. We focus first on making a quality product we can be proud to ship and we believe we can offer this quality to you and prices you won’t be able to beat anywhere else by offering it to you direct so you don’t have to pay the middleman markups you typically see. You’re right, these covers can be more reasonably priced and we’re here to do that for you!