Why invest in custom coffee bags? 

Standard packaging is often plain and dull, providing a blank canvas for brands. 

This allows coffee businesses to customise their packaging to showcase the uniqueness of the brand and product. 

The use of custom coffee bags can be highly beneficial for roasters and coffee shops. Custom coffee packaging can be tailored to the brand and product, making it instantly recognisable and alluring to customers. 

Brands have several options when customising coffee bags, which include techniques such as hot foil stamping, embossing, and spot UV.

Read on to discover more about how your business can benefit from custom coffee bags.

What is custom coffee packaging?

While coffee packaging was specifically designed to protect its contents, it often doubles as a marketing tool for roasters and coffee shops. 

Studies show brands have approximately seven seconds to attract a customer’s attention enough for them to engage with the product.

Therefore, coffee packaging must not only communicate brand identity and product quality but also help the consumer get to know a roaster better. Custom coffee bags can achieve this while boosting brand recognition and mindshare. 

According to a 2021 study, 72% of consumers stated a product’s packaging design influenced their decision to purchase. This implies a great number of consumers form a perceived value of a brand due to its packaging.

Notably, the coffee bags’ look and feel are crucial contributors to brand identity, awareness, promotion, and ultimately, sales. 

When considering how to design custom coffee packaging, roasters will have to consider several factors, These include colour, design, coffee bag structure, and typography – all of which can help a roaster convey their brand story and values, as well as the bean type and roast profile.

How can I benefit from custom coffee packaging?

Investing in custom coffee packaging can benefit a business in several ways. 

Provides product protection

For instance, custom coffee bags may offer better protection for the beans inside, as the bags’ size, shape, and materials have been fully customised to the roaster’s needs. 

Alternatively, standard packaging often arrives in identical shapes and sizes for everyone, without additional customisations. 

Roasters can choose to add additional layers of barrier protection to their customised coffee packaging to ensure the beans retain their inherent characteristics. 

Additionally, roasters can choose to add degassing valves to coffee packaging. This allows carbon dioxide (CO2) to escape the bag while preventing oxygen from entering, prolonging the beans’ freshness and quality.

Increased brand awareness

Custom coffee bags can help a roastery become instantly recognisable, increasing the likelihood of it gaining new customers. 

Customisations can help build awareness of the brand, as well as its style, ethics, and values. 

For example, brands aimed at customers between the ages of 18 and 30 may customise their bags with a design that appeals to a younger audience. This could be through the use of bright colours, eclectic designs, and a rebellious look.

Alternatively, if a brand is aiming to target a slightly older audience, a more subtle and classy coffee bag design may be more suitable.

The use of customisation can also be used to elevate a brand’s ethics. Brands with sustainable business practices can choose to reflect that by investing in sustainable packaging materials. 

This can help to attract consumers who are in league with the brand’s ethics. A 2020 survey done by McKinsey shows over 60% of consumers are willing to pay more for a product with sustainable packaging.

What to consider when designing custom coffee bags?

The survey conducted by McKinsey revealed more than half of US consumers are concerned about the environmental impact of packaging.

It is important to note that many standard coffee bags use aluminium foil in the packaging. Notably, a recent study found traces of aluminium within coffee beans, noting that coating the material with plastic can help avoid contamination.

However, petroleum-based plastics are known to take up to 1,000 years to degrade. Furthermore, a plastic coating conflicts with an increasing customer preference for environmentally friendly packaging. 

Therefore, one of the safest and most sustainable alternatives to aluminium is polylactic acid (PLA).

PLA is a toxin-free bioplastic made from the fermentation of carbohydrates from renewable resources such as maize, cornstarch, and sugarcane.

While the fermentation produces resin filaments that have similar characteristics to petroleum-based plastic, PLA can break down in as little as 90 days when placed in a commercial composting environment. This is compared to the 500 years typical of traditional plastics.

PLA is widely used as a laminate for coffee packaging materials such as kraft paper and rice paper. It has a high tensile strength (7,000 psi), can withstand temperatures of up to 420°F, and has good water vapour and humidity barrier properties.

According to research, PLA lined bags can protect the contents from moisture and oxygen for up to 12 months, making it a good choice for coffee that will spend long periods of time in transit or in storage.

An additional consideration for custom coffee bags is to use sustainable, water-based inks. Water-based, soy-based, or vegetable-based solvents are all low in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and work particularly well on paper substrates.

They are better for air quality, pose less of a risk to workers, and have a significantly lower impact overall on the environment when compared to traditional inks. Unlike plastisol inks, which contain plastics or polyvinyl chloride (PVC), low-VOC inks are fully biodegradable.

Sustainable packaging materials and customisation techniques can help reduce a roaster’s carbon footprint and attract customers to prioritise eco-friendly products and businesses.

At MTPak Coffee, we offer roasters and coffee shops a range of 100% recyclable coffee packaging options that can be custom-printed to your business specifications.

Choose from renewable materials such as kraft paper, rice paper, or multilayer LDPE packaging with an environmentally friendly PLA lining, all of which minimise waste and contribute to a circular economy.

More so, we give you complete control over the design process by allowing you to build your own coffee bags. Our design team is available to help you create the ideal coffee packaging.

Plus, we can custom-print coffee bags using innovative digital printing technology, with a quick turnaround time of 40-hours and 24-hour shipping time.

For more information on how to customise coffee packaging to suit your business, contact our team.