The Best Outdoor Food Covers

Buying Guide

There are few things worse after spending time preparing a picnic or outdoor smorgasbord than unwelcome pests, dirt or pollen. Enter the food cover, a great product that can save the day. By keeping your plate guarded, these covers eliminate worries of bugs or other unwanted guests.

Due to the similarity of many outdoor food covers, you may do well by identifying the desired height or fringe design you want before you begin to shop. In addition, you should weigh the cost of different-numbered packs of covers, as you may need more or fewer, depending on how often you plan to entertain large crowds.

Food tents often come in heights of 8 to 11 inches, which can be a crucial difference, depending on what you plan to put underneath. For banquets or outdoor parties where you’ll be using larger serving platters, it is recommended to purchase larger food covers when possible.

• Due to being so lightweight and transportable, many of the food covers on the market are easily blown away by stiff winds. You can help prevent that by placing small weights on the lace or mesh extending from the bottom of the cover.
• When using these covers in the garden to protect plants, you can mound some soil around the bottom edges to hold them in place.
• While food covers will deflect even small flying insects and some amount of pollen and dirt, fruit flies are often small and persistent enough to get through. This is not necessarily a failure of the food cover, but rather a limitation of how fine the mesh can effectively be made before it becomes closer to a solid fabric.