Café Packaging Checklist: Everything You Need to Open

If you just need the short answer: a café can open with around a dozen packaging SKUs. That's two or three hot cup sizes with matching lids, one cold cup with lid, serviettes, carrier bags in two sizes, greaseproof paper, a food container for anything served to go, and a handful of extras like stirrers and sauce pots. The quantities table below is sized for a café doing 100–150 covers a day in week one. Everything else here comes down to three things: not overbuying, not mismatching cups to lids, and setting a reorder rhythm before your first "we're out of large lids" Saturday.

Infographic coming soonDay-one café packaging kit laid out flat: two hot cup sizes with matched lids, one cold cup, serviettes, two carrier bag sizes, greaseproof paper, food container, sauce pots and stirrers — the dozen core SKUs labelled.

The day-one list, with quantities

Sized for a new café expecting 100–150 transactions a day. Scale it linearly if your forecast differs — and forecast low. You can reorder in days. You can't un-buy ten cases.

That's roughly two weeks of stock at the forecast volume — enough to learn your real numbers, not so much that a wrong guess fills the cellar.

Cups and lids: match rims before anything else

The most common opening-week mistake is cups and lids that don't fit. Lids fit rim diameters, not ounce sizes. Most hot-cup ranges put 8 oz cups on one rim (commonly 80 mm) and 12 + 16 oz cups on a shared larger rim (commonly 90 mm). So a three-size menu can run on two lid SKUs, and a 12+16 oz menu runs on one. When you order from hot cups, check the stated rim size on both the cup and the lid rather than assuming the ounce numbers line up. We get asked to sort out mismatched stock more than any other opening-week problem.

Full sizing logic — which sizes suit which menu, ml equivalents, single versus double wall — sits in our coffee cup sizes guide. The short version for an opening café: start with two hot sizes and add a third only when sales data demands it.

Carrier bags: two sizes, and know the rules

Two bag sizes cover a café: a small bag for a drink-and-pastry order and a medium for lunches. Paper suits the trade and handles the weight, as long as you double-check the gusset size against your largest box. Stock both at carrier bags.

One compliance note. The UK has carrier-bag charging rules that apply to many retailers, food businesses included, with details that vary across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Build the charge into your till setup where it applies, and check gov.uk for the current rules rather than copying what the café down the road does. Our plain-English summary is in carrier bag rules in the UK.

Serviettes and the small stuff

Serviettes are a rounding error per unit and a real cost per year, so pick a lane. A modest dispenser napkin for the counter, and — if you do table service or messier food — a larger, better one handed out with food. Budget one to two per cover. Formats, ply and the dispenser-versus-stack decision are covered in the napkins and serviettes buying guide; the range is at serviettes.

Then there are the items nobody remembers until they're missing: cup carriers (the four-cup trays that turn a wobbly office run into a one-hand job), stirrers, and a roll of tape for sealing delivery bags if you're on the apps.

Storage: plan the shelf before the order

Packaging is bulky and paper-based, so where it lives matters:

• Measure before you buy. A case of 1,000 double wall cups is roughly a stacked washing-machine of volume. Two weeks of full stock for a busy café takes up serious shelving.
• Dry, off the floor, lids sealed. Damp softens cupboard and warps lid seating. Keep opened cases closed between services.
• First in, first out. Rotate like food stock. Cups don't expire, but crushed and yellowed sleeves at the back of the shelf are money you already spent.
• Decant to the counter. A day's stock at the machine, the rest in the store. Counter clutter slows baristas more than any other packaging sin.

What you don't need on day one

Overbuying is the quieter mistake, and it usually happens in the same places:

• Printed/branded cups. Custom print needs volume commitments and long lead times, and it locks you in before you know your size split. Open with plain kraft or white, add a sticker with your logo if you want the branding, and revisit print at month six with real numbers.
• A third and fourth cup size. Add sizes when customers ask, not before. Every size you don't stock is a lid you don't stock and a shelf lane you get back.
• Speciality containers for a "maybe" menu. If the summer salad menu isn't confirmed, don't buy its bowls. Suppliers can deliver within days; your storage can't un-fill itself.
• Six months of anything. Bulk pricing tempts, but two weeks of stock plus a reliable reorder beats a cellar of slowly yellowing cases. Cash flow matters more than a marginal unit saving in your first quarter.

The test for any borderline item: will this be used every single day? If not, it can wait for the second order.

Reorder cadence: the system that saves your Saturdays

Running out mid-service is the failure mode. The fix is a cadence, not vigilance.

1. Week one and two: count everything out. Note what you actually use per day of each SKU. Your forecast was wrong somewhere — find where.
2. Set a par level per SKU — usually 1.5× your expected usage between deliveries.
3. Set a reorder point — when stock hits one delivery-lead-time's worth of usage plus a buffer, you order. With short UK delivery times this can be lean.
4. One person owns the count, once a week, same day, walking the store with a checklist. Ten minutes.

Diagram coming soonPar-level and reorder-point diagram: a stock line falling over a week, showing the par level, the reorder trigger point (lead time plus buffer), and the delivery that tops it back up.

Once your usage settles — usually by month two — the smart move is making the order automatic rather than remembered. A repeating order of your core SKUs at your measured usage rate turns packaging from a weekly decision into a background process. You then only actively order the long-tail items. That's the logic behind our bundles too: the Café Starter Pack exists so day one is one decision instead of twelve, and your own usage data takes over from there.

Open with two weeks of stock, match your rims, measure your first month honestly, and packaging becomes the one part of the café that runs itself.