Personalized disposable cups are one of your most consistent branding and marketing tools. Our all-in-one guide will help you choose the most compatible kinds for your coffee shop, food truck, smoothie shop, or brewery.

With so many different materials and styles to choose from, it’s easy to get overwhelmed on the best way to keep your shop stocked. If you choose a disposable cup that doesn’t line up with your brand values or isn’t compatible with your target audience, you risk wasting time and money. You’ll have to go through the process of reprinting and restocking all over again!

This all-in-one guide will ensure you pick the most compatible and cost-efficient personalized disposable cups. Whether you’re setting up shop for the first time or opening a new one, you’ll have everything you need to know about today’s best disposable cups.

The Three Key Ingredients To Personalized Disposable Cups

What’s in a disposable cup? When choosing disposable cups for your cafe, you need to take into account details like personalization, sustainability, and functionality to find the best fit.

Personalization

Personalizing a coffee cup to suit your brand image is how you get customers recognizing you instantly and coming back for more. Your disposable cup should have clear, crisp printing that puts your best foot forward instantly.

Not only does personalization help with overall brand identity, it’s a must during branding-focused events like trade shows and fairs. First impressions are powerful and you don’t want to miss out on future repeat customers, right?

Sustainability

Have you ever thought about going sustainable for your business? Not only are you reducing harmful waste in landfills and oceans, you can even save a little money through tax breaks.

Many states offer green tax credits and tax breaks for businesses committed to sustainable behaviors such as green equipment or regularly recycling materials.

Functionality

Easily the most clear purpose of personalized disposable cups is making sure to keep your customers’ drinks as tasty as can be. The type of drinks you usually serve – as well as quantity and visual style – will all play into which you should choose.

Below are our diverse selection of sustainable and customizable disposable cups for beverage businesses. Let’s see which one will make your brand shine and your customers eager for a refill!

Personalized Disposable Cups

1. Clear Plastic Cups

Despite their fundamentally simpler design, clear plastic cups are surprisingly complex once you do a little digging. These cups function as an artistic showcase, allowing brands to show off the color, texture, and design of their drinks just as much as their logo.

A clear plastic cup lets the customer get a nice, long look at the beautiful work the barista or bartender put into the drink. Customers can admire the rich, creamy texture of a smoothie or the trickle of bubbles in a frothy ale.

The only branding challenge you can face with clear plastic cups are the color and shade of your logo. Light colored drinks like milk teas, IPAs, or fruit smoothies tend to work better with dark logos. Darker colored drinks like stouts, cold brew, or chocolate frappes do better with lighter logos.

There are ways around this, however – very colorful logos tend to stand out no matter what. You can also do multiple variations on your logo and reserve them for specific drink types.

One of the best details about clear plastic cups is how you can get really playful with a drink’s composition. Some cafes and smoothie shops will artfully stack layers of yogurt, cream, fruit, or blended coffee to create bold stripes and swirls of color through the cup. In short, clear plastic cups are some of the most social media-friendly options.

If you’re okay with your logo occasionally blending into a drink’s color and shade, clear plastic cups are a solid pick for brands that want to show off their drink’s artistry.

 

These Disposable Cups Are Best Suited For

  • Brands that primarily serve cold and frozen drinks like smoothies, cold brew, and beer
  • Brands that regularly make colorful, complex drinks and want to show them off
  • Brands who want to encourage customers to share drinks on social media
Personalized Disposable Cups

2. Eco Clear Cups

If your brand is working hard to be as sustainable as possible, the eco clear cups will demonstrate to customers you care. Our eco clear cups are made out of PLA, short for polylactic acid and originating from green materials like sugarcane and corn starch.

One of our favorite details about eco clear cups is how they’re not only environmentally-friendly, they actually feed plant life. Since they’re already made out of plant-based materials, they’ll naturally break down into the environment and help new plants grow. Feeding your customers and feeding the planet – that’s a win-win in our book.

It’s important to note that these cups are not recyclable – they’re compostable. This term means they will naturally break down in the environment, so you need to dispose of them like you would any other type of food-based trash. Both regular trash cans and composting facilities are well-suited to eco clear cups.

Similar to clear plastic cups, eco clear cups are ideal for brands that want to show off their drink’s color, texture, and design. The same design pros and cons generally apply to eco clear cups, too, with the exception of eco clear cups’ compostable design.

These Disposable Cups Are Best Suited For

  • Brands that primarily serve cold and frozen drinks like smoothies, cold brew, and beer
  • Eco-friendly brands who want to stock up on sustainable products
  • Brands who want to take advantage of green tax credits and sustainable tax breaks

 

Personalized Disposable Cups

3. RPET Clear Plastic Cups

If your business is more interested in recyclable plastic cups instead of compostable, our RPET clear plastic cups are a prime pick. PET is short for Polyethylene Terephthalate, a type of post-consumer recycled plastic.

In other words, RPET clear plastic cups have already been recycled and can be recycled again. Most recycling systems accept RPET and can be recycled multiple times before losing its durability (which manufacturers can then increase with additives).

These are some great little details customers can learn when enjoying your regular drinks or summer menu. RPET clear plastic cups are the gift that keeps on giving for sustainable business models!

We’re proud to offer flexible printing models to suit businesses of all shapes and sizes. If you’re not sure if you want to commit to RPET clear plastic cups yet, we offer low order minimums so you can experiment without breaking the bank.

 

These Disposable Cups Are Best Suited For

  • Brands that primarily serve cold and frozen drinks like smoothies, cold brew, and beer
  • Sustainability-focused businesses who need recyclable options
  • Small businesses who don’t want large orders for their accessories yet
    Personalized Disposable Cups

    4. Paper Cold Cups

    Are you a business that wants to serve big, cold drinks for the hot weather? Paper cold cups are a summer staple that signal to your customers you’re ready to help them make happy summer memories.

    Our durable, polylined paper cold cups prevent leakage for a wide variety of drinks such as smoothies, lemonades, sodas, and more. They also provide additional insulation to keep drinks colder for longer (a must-have during those sweltering summer days). Just like our clear cups, you can also customize these to your heart’s content.

    (If you’re worried the internal coating could affect the drink’s flavor, don’t worry – our protective coating for our personalized disposable cups are completely flavorless!)

    In fact, some customers prefer paper cold cups over plastic varieties because they’re not as cold to the touch. These cups also invoke more nostalgic imagery since they’re a staple of classic American diners and smoothie shops. These details may seem small, but they’ll resonate pretty strongly if you know the ins and outs of your unique customer base.

     

    These Disposable Cups Are Best Suited For

    • Businesses that regularly serve large, cold drinks on hot days
    • Any brand that has customers preferring paper over plastic
    • Sustainable brands who lean toward paper over plastic for their brand image

     

    Personalized Disposable Cups

    5. Single Wall Hot Cups

    If you’re a cafe or tea shop owner, you’re likely already familiar with the one and only single wall hot cup. These signature cups are tidy, practical, and well-suited to a variety of hot drink styles.

    Hot cider, hot chocolate, coffee, tea, and steamed milk are just a few of the drinks that go hand-in-hand with single wall hot cups. These poly-lined cups protect the drinker from potentially painful leaks while insulating the drink to keep it as hot as possible.

    We provide customizable lids as well as customizable coffee sleeves so you can create the most stylish and striking design possible.

    Personalized disposable coffee cups are one of the branding tools your customers – and would-be customers – encounter the most frequently. Whether customers are setting it on their office desk or tossing the empty cup in a public trash can, curious onlookers will learn about your brand in the most natural way possible.

     

    These Disposable Cups Are Best Suited For

    • Brands that regularly serve hot drinks like coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and cider
    • Any businesses that wants to customize further with personalized lids and sleeves
    • Brands who have elaborate designs that cover multiple parts of the cup
    Personalized Disposable Cups

    6. Double Wall Hot Cups

    If you’re a business that doesn’t want sleeves on your coffee cups for branding purposes or personal preference, double wall hot cups are for you. The double coating provides additional insulation to ensure the cup isn’t too hot to the touch.

    You’ll still have all the stylish, colorful printing options to bring out your brand’s best side. Our printing technology lets you create minimalist logos, playful patterns, or recreate photos. If you’re not sure how your design will look on the final cup, we’ll work with you until your vision is even better than you were hoping for.

    Last but not least, our double wall hot cups are lined with PLA to ensure they’re still compostable.

     

    These Disposable Cups Are Best Suited For

    • Brands who regularly serve hot drinks like coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and cider
    • Businesses who don’t want to add coffee sleeves to their hot drink cups
    • Any brand who wants more compostable paper cup options in their line-up
    Personalized Disposable Cups

    7. Eco Hot Cups

    If you’ve grown worried about the growing issue of excess compostable cups littering landfills, our eco hot cups could be your answer. Similar to a few of our previous options, like the RPET plastic cups, these cups naturally degrade and return nutrients to the soil.

    Does that mean you can’t still decorate these cups with your logo or unique designs? Of course you can! Our personalized disposable coffee cups use both certified renewable resources as well as crisp, bold printing so you can have the best of both worlds.

    Did you know color increases brand recognition by up to 80%? The same study found anywhere from between 62% to 90% of a buying decision is made through color alone. Businesses can use up to four colors in our eco hot cup designs as well as print imagery on two sides of the cup.

    After you narrow down the most compatible cup sizes and sleeves, there’s nothing you can’t make with Your Brand Cafe on your side.

     

    These Disposable Cups Are Best Suited For

    • Brands who regularly serve hot drinks like coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and cider
    • Sustainability-focused businesses that want more compostable options
    • Brands with colorful logos or complex designs with multiple parts

    Your Brand Cafe Has The Personalized Disposable Cups You Need

    From crisp RPET clear plastic cups to insulated double wall hot cups, we have a solution with your name on it (literally!). Just reach out to us and we’re happy to wrangle all the major and minor details into a cup design you can be proud of.

    At Your Brand Cafe, we know that cold and hot cups are more than just a means to an end. They demonstrate everything from your brand imagery to your sustainable values at a glance, working around-the-clock to keep a steady stream of customers through your front doors.

    Want to test out your designs on some of our cups? Contact us today to start discussing quotes or try one of our sampler boxes – we can’t wait to hear from you.

    Ashley (Ashe) Samuels is a business writer and marketing strategist in the food and beverage industry with a focus in coffee, tea, and alcohol. She has nearly a decade of experience helping brands launch products, build awareness, and craft marketing strategies. She's passionate about sustainability, wellness, and leaving the coffee industry a better place.