How to Personalize Coffee Cup Sleeves: A Guide

Sleeves for takeout cups are a must for any company that serves hot beverages. Their primary function is to shield customers’ hands from burns while they take coffee on the move. They are thin, light, and reasonably priced.

Read More: custom cup sleeves

They do, however, also provide considerable financial and environmental advantages. For instance, Tim Hortons, a well-known coffee brand in Canada, used 200 million fewer cups in only a single year after switching from double cupping to recyclable sleeves for their hot beverages.

Although many coffee manufacturers choose for the commonplace plain corrugated cardboard sleeve, personalized sleeves provide advantages specific to their branding.

They can be made to match the cups themselves, but they may also provide extra text and pictures to make the effect more profound and long-lasting.

Here are some suggestions for personalizing the sleeves of your takeout cups.

Why is the design of a cup sleeve so crucial?

Simple inventions like takeout cup sleeves have had a significant and long-lasting influence on the coffee industry.

They are essential to the growing on-the-go industry, having been called a “indispensable masterpiece of design” by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and “an ingenious design defining the modern American coffee tradition” by Smithsonian Magazine.

Early in the 1990s, Portland-based entrepreneur Jay Sorensen introduced the Java Jacket, a straightforward cardboard sleeve that fit over coffee cups to shield users’ hands from reprimands. This marked the invention of the first coffee cup sleeves.

Numerous coffee businesses and roasters have now adopted them, many of them including their own unique designs.

Though its primary function is to stop burns, cup sleeves have developed into an effective marketing tool for coffee companies.

They may be customized based on drinks, seasons, and even individual consumers, in addition to providing more area for branding. This promotes increased client loyalty by making the product more adaptable and memorable.

Unlike spammy advertisements that have nothing to do with them, branding your cups with sleeves reminds customers of a company they have already used and encourages them to do so again without disturbing them.

Although personalizing the cups itself can yield all these advantages, doing so isn’t always feasible or economical.

By branding your sleeves, you may reduce expenses and quickly alter or modify your messaging as needed. A fully recyclable or biodegradable sleeve is also simpler to make because it won’t come into touch with actual hot beverages.

Ideas to personalize the sleeves of your coffee cups

There are countless ways to personalize the sleeves of your coffee cups. You may easily utilize some of the following examples to market your coffee product, even if some of them entail working with or advertising for non-coffee related firms.

Emphasize special occasions

In 2013, Alfred Coffee established its first location in Los Angeles’ Melrose Place. Since then, they’ve developed a reputation for consistently switching up the sleeves of their coffee cups, frequently in honor of certain occasions.

For instance, they introduce sleeves with the phrase “coffee is my valentine” around Valentine’s Day, and they decorate their coffee cup sleeves with skeleton hands for Halloween.

Customers are more likely to remember Alfred Coffee thanks to these designs, which also provide them an incentive to share the cups on social media with friends and family.

Give to a worthy cause.

The Salvation Army began an advertising campaign in Portland back in 2012, collaborating with coffee establishments to provide beverages for takeout. They sent the coffee shops thousands of blank cardboard sleeves devoid of any branding or graphics as part of this promotion.

Rather, the sleeves said that they were free of charge and that the proceeds—which are often used for advertising—went to help the less fortunate. Additionally, it gave users access to a link that allowed them to give to the Salvation Army.

Attend to occasions

Coffee shops and roasters are frequently asked to provide catering for various events, such as trade exhibitions, workplace parties, conferences, and festivals. For coffee companies, this may be a profitable deal that offers increased sales and more brand awareness.