Holiday trade is decided in August. Not because anyone wants to think about December in the heat, but because the shops that have something ready in November are the ones that ordered it while they were still selling sundaes.
The cheapest seasonal item you can run
Changing a menu for a season is expensive. New ingredients, new training, new waste when the season ends and nobody wants the flavor any more.
Changing a straw is not. Red and green striped paper straws turn a milkshake you already sell into something that reads as seasonal, without touching the recipe, the price or the training. The drink is identical. The photograph is not.
That is the whole trick, and it works for the same reason the color changing spoons work: the thing the customer is holding does more selling than the thing they are drinking.
They are not only a holiday item
Buying a case for December alone is a poor use of the money, and it is not necessary. These are paper drinking straws, a paper alternative to plastic for milkshakes, iced coffee, sodas and floats, and the stripe happens to suit the holidays rather than being limited to them.
Red and green appear at other points in the year, and a striped straw reads as retro soda fountain in any month. Plenty of counters run them year-round and simply lean on them harder in December. Cases come a thousand at a time, so treating them as a seasonal-only line means most of the case sits unused.
Paper straws have a shelf life in the drink
The honest caveat. Paper does not behave like plastic in a long drink, and a straw sitting in a cold beverage for an hour is not going to be as rigid at the end as at the start.
For a milkshake or a soda consumed at a table, this is a non-issue. For a large iced drink someone carries around for an afternoon, be aware of it rather than surprised by it. If most of your cold volume travels, the flip top lid is often the better answer than a straw at all, and we went into that in serving dirty soda in clear PET cups.
Planning the order
Work backwards from when you want them on the counter, not from when you run out of the current line. If the striped straws are meant to appear the week the holiday menu starts, the order goes in with enough room for delivery, and August is not too early for that.
The same logic applies to anything printed, only more so, since printed items carry proof approval and production time on top of shipping. That timeline is set out in how custom printed cups work.
The rest of the straw options
There are color changing paper straws that shift as they chill in a cold drink, in two color pairs, which is the version to reach for if children are a meaningful share of your trade. Both sit with the spoons in the spoons and straws range.
If you are running one straw all year and one for the season, that is two lines and a decision made once. Anything more than that and you are managing straws instead of selling ice cream.