Seasonal Cups

Coffee cups or party cups: the two seasonal products

This collection holds two products that look alike on a screen but do different jobs. The Christmas coffee cups are hot-drink cups made in 8, 12, 16 and 20 oz, with single-wall or double-wall builds. They are meant for a café's winter menu: peppermint mochas, eggnog lattes, gingerbread chai. Christmas paper cups cover a wider size range, from small 4 oz cups up to 24 oz, and are built for both hot and cold drinks. They suit office parties, school concerts, church socials, holiday markets and family gatherings where some guests want cider and others want punch.

A simple test helps. If the cup goes out with a lid through a drive-thru window, choose the coffee cup. If it sits on a buffet table next to a punch bowl, choose the paper cup.

A seasonal planning calendar

Seasonal cups have one hard rule: they are only useful during their window. Order too late and the season is half over when the box arrives. The table below gives a working timeline, counting back from the day you want the cups on the counter.

These dates leave time for design, proofing and samples, plus the 4–6 business days of production after approval and shipping. Rush options exist, but in November and December everyone else is ordering too, so it pays not to rely on them. The Christmas products are what we stock in this collection; the other seasons are printed to your own artwork on the same cups, or on our special design paper cups.

Designing a holiday cup people want to photograph

Seasonal cups get shared online more than any everyday cup, and that is most of their value. A few things make the difference between a cup that gets posted and one that doesn't.

• Give it one strong idea. A single bold pattern, a hand-drawn illustration or a large, simple shape reads better in a photo than a busy collage of snowmen, trees and presents.
• Keep the logo visible but small. On a holiday cup, the design does the attracting. A small, clear logo near the rim is enough for people to know where it came from.
• Use a finish that photographs well. Matte avoids glare under café lights. Gold, silver or rose-gold foil looks festive in person and catches light in photos, but works best as an accent rather than the whole cup.
• Print the colors you can match. Holiday reds and greens vary a lot in CMYK. If your red has to match a storefront or a menu board, print it as a PMS (Pantone) color.
• Think about the sleeve. A sleeve covers the middle of a single-wall cup. Either design around it or switch to a double-wall cup and skip the sleeve.

You can set out the size, print and finish with the step-by-step order form on this page and describe the idea in the notes. Our design team will turn a rough brief into a finished holiday design for free.

Who orders seasonal cups, and why

Coffee shops are the obvious buyers. A holiday cup tells regulars that the winter menu has started, and it gives them a reason to post a photo, which a plain white cup never does. Drive-thru stands use the cup itself as a sign, since a customer in a car sees the cup before the menu board.

Plenty of other businesses order them too. Bakeries and chocolate shops hand out cocoa at holiday open houses. Real estate offices, banks and car dealerships serve cider at customer events in December. Schools and churches use them for winter concerts and craft fairs. Christmas tree lots and holiday light displays sell hot drinks to people standing in the cold, and a printed cup with the farm or venue name goes home with them.

How many seasonal cups to order

Ordering for a season is different from restocking an everyday cup. The design has an end date, so leftovers after the holidays are hard to use. On the other hand, running out on December 20 means switching back to plain cups at the busiest time of year.

For cafés and coffee chains

Look at last year's sales for the weeks the cup will run and split them by size. Order enough of the holiday cup to cover your seasonal drink sales plus a buffer, and keep plain cups on hand for regular orders if you are worried about overstocking. Multi-store groups get the benefit of volume discounts when every location uses the same design.

For events and parties

Count guests, then plan on two or three cups per person over an evening, because people put cups down and grab fresh ones. A run of a few hundred covers most office parties and school events. The minimum is 100 units.

Cups that last past one holiday

If you would like the cups to be usable after the season, design for winter rather than for Christmas. Snowflakes, pine branches and a "warm drinks" theme can run from late November into February without looking out of date. A plain printed red paper cup with your logo is another option that works for Christmas, Valentine's Day and the Fourth of July.

Steps to order holiday cups

1. Choose the product. Coffee cups for café drinks to go; paper cups for parties and mixed hot and cold drinks.
2. Pick sizes and wall type. Most cafés pair a 12 oz and a 16 oz; party hosts usually want one size.
3. Send artwork or a brief. Include colors, any wording and the date the cups need to be in use.
4. Approve the proof and samples. Free samples let you check colors and finishes under your own lighting.
5. Production and shipping. 4–6 business days after approval, then free shipping to the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia.

Pairing seasonal cups with the rest of your packaging

A holiday cup looks stronger when something else on the counter matches it. Cafés often add a seasonal sleeve on their regular cups for the drinks the holiday cup doesn't cover, and bakeries print matching bags for cookies and gingerbread. Our event and seasonal sleeves can carry the same artwork as your cups. For questions about timing before the holiday rush, call (503) 358-0443.