Printed cups are the cheapest advertising a small shop will ever buy. Every serve leaves the counter carrying your name, and unlike a poster it walks around the neighborhood on its own. What stops most shops ordering them is not the cost. It is not knowing how the process runs.
What actually happens after you order
Custom cups are made to order. Nothing is sitting in a warehouse waiting, which is the single most important thing to understand before you plan around them.
You supply artwork. A digital proof comes back for written approval. Only once you have approved that proof does the print run begin. Premium custom ice cream cups allow five to ten business days for proof approval and printing before the order ships, and ground delivery then takes a further four to eight business days.
Add those together and the honest planning number is three to four weeks from placing the order to having cups on your shelf. Not three days.
Order against your season, not your stock level
The mistake we see is shops ordering custom cups when they notice the plain ones running low. By then it is too late, and they end up running plain cups for a month while the printed ones are still in production.
Work backwards instead. If you want branded cups on the counter for the first warm weekend in May, the order goes in during early April. If you want them for a summer festival, count back a month from the festival date and put a reminder in the calendar.
The proof stage is where you catch problems
Approval is written for a reason. It is your chance to check the thing before a thousand copies of it exist, and it is worth more than a glance.
Look at how the logo sits on a curved surface rather than on your screen. Check that small text is still legible at cup scale. Confirm the colors are the ones you meant. A cup is not a business card, and detail that reads beautifully at desktop size can disappear entirely once it is wrapped around something you hold in one hand.
If anything looks wrong, say so at the proof. After approval the run is underway.
Which size to print first
Custom printing is available across the range, from small tasting sizes through to the largest servings, and the temptation is to print everything. Resist it the first time.
Print your standard counter size first, because that is the cup the most people will carry out of the door, and it gives you the most branded impressions per case. Once you know the artwork works in the real world, extend it to the sizes either side of it. Our notes on choosing an 8 oz cup cover how to decide which size that is for your counter.
There is a second argument for starting with the tasting size instead, which is that a free sample carries your branding to people who have not bought anything yet. Both are defensible. What is not defensible is printing six sizes at once before you have seen one of them in a customer's hand.
Before you commit artwork
Have the artwork ready in a form someone can actually use, decide who is approving the proof, and give yourself the full lead time. The rest of the range, including the printed containers and jars, sits in the custom printed collection. If you are unsure whether your artwork will translate, call the shop during opening hours and ask before you order rather than after.