A Simple 5-Step Process for Creating Custom Ice Cream Packaging

The right packaging can have a huge impact on everything from your ice cream’s sales to the way your customers perceive its taste.

Unfortunately, many businesses neglect the importance of good ice cream packaging, instead opting for cheap, generic, unbranded cups and containers. The end result is often high-quality ice cream that’s let down -- from a sales and presentation perspective -- by poor packaging.

Luckily, designing stylish, eye-catching and effective custom ice cream packaging isn’t a difficult process. In fact, with the right approach, the process of turning your design concept into a real set of ice cream cups, containers, and other packages is refreshingly easy.

From selecting sizes to choosing materials, colors, and graphics, we’ve listed a simple five-step design process below that your business can use to produce high quality, highly effective cups, containers and another packaging for your ice cream products.

Choose Your Ice Cream Container Sizes

Ice cream containers come in a variety of sizes, from small cups designed for a single scoop of ice cream to large containers designed for anywhere from five to 20 servings.

As a business, it’s important that you choose the right container sizes to maximize sales of your ice cream while offering a variety of choices for your customers.

Our range of ice cream containers ranges in size from 3.5 ounces (enough for a single scoop of ice cream) all the way up to large 32-ounce containers designed for large to-go packaged ice cream products.

We also offer a range of sizes in between, from single-serving four and 5.5-ounce paper cups to 14 ounces and 16-ounce containers, which offer a mid-sized amount of pre-packaged ice cream for customers to enjoy at home.

As a business, you’ll likely want to offer several options to your customers -- for in-store, a small and mid-sized cup for single servings, as well as a 14 to a 32-ounce container for customers that want to purchase your ice cream to take home.

If you primarily sell your ice cream through grocery stores, supermarkets, and other distributors, you may also want to add additional sizes to increase your appeal to customers and market to a larger audience of people interested in different quantities of ice cream.

Pick Your Materials - Paper or Plastic?

Ice cream containers come in several different materials, the most popular of which are paper and plastic.

Plastic containers (or, more commonly, plastic cups) are traditionally used for sundaes, parfaits, and other single-serving ice cream products. You’ll usually only use them for ice cream sold for consumption in your shop, or for single-serving frozen takeout products.

Paper containers, on the other hand, are the default option for almost all forms of pre-packaged ice cream. This means you’ll want to choose this container option if you’re selling most of your ice cream as a pre-packaged product for customers to enjoy at home.

As an ice cream business owner, it’s important to analyze your sales metrics before purchasing custom ice cream containers, then choose the right ratio of paper to plastic containers based on your customer audience’s buying habits.

Select Colors That Match Your Brand

Once you’ve chosen your container sizes and materials, it’s time to select a color scheme for your ice cream containers.

Most ice cream containers are sold in a generic white paper color, although you can often pick and choose a customized color scheme, pattern or background design based on your need as an ice cream business owner.

If your store has a specific brand image -- for example, a color that’s used heavily in your signs or interior decorating -- it’s often good to use it for your containers. You can also pick a custom container color based on the flavor of ice cream you’re selling, such as brown for chocolate.

Either way, it’s important to choose colors that match your brand, as this helps your customers associate the taste, pleasure, and experience of eating your ice cream with your business and brand as a whole.

Design Your Logo, Heading, and Text

Chosen your container sizes? Picked the right materials? Selected a color scheme? Now it’s time to choose a logo, heading and a short section of text that accurately reflects not only how your ice cream tastes but the values of your brand.

If your business already has a logo, this aspect of the process is easy -- just scale the logo as required to match the size of the packaging. If not, it’s best to work with a professional graphic designer to develop a logo that matches your ice cream’s taste and image.

When you’re designing a custom container, your logo and other graphics can be as simple as you’d like or as complicated as you feel they need to be. For example, our team can produce custom ice cream containers with full container printing, covering every inch of the surface.

This means that you can really go wild with your brand’s unique design elements, from colors and patterns to eye-catching images, unique typefaces and more.

Ultimately, it’s the design of your container that will attract attention from shoppers and drive sales of your ice cream from new customers browsing the supermarket aisle, making this an essential step in the custom packaging design and production process.

Purchase-Based on Your Sales Volume

Finally, it’s important to purchase custom printed ice cream packaging based on your existing sales volume.

This helps you to minimize the impact of purchasing containers and another packaging on your business’s cash flow, freeing up capital for you to use to purchase other materials, pay staff, advertise and continue to grow your business.

If your ice cream business is small in scale, it’s worth talking to your packaging manufacturer about a relatively small order. Many ice cream container manufacturers offer small minimum order quantities (MOQs) for small, growing businesses -- often as small as 1,000 units.

If you’re part of a large ice cream business, you might be able to secure a better per-unit price by ordering a large number of containers, reducing your costs and helping you earn more profit on each container of ice cream you sell.

Either way, it’s important to purchase based on the needs of your business. Doing so lets you balance affordable pricing with manageable cash flow -- two of the most important aspects of purchasing items for your ice cream business.