Festival Cups

Pints, half-pints, two-pints, stackables. Which one fits your bar? Standard answer: pint cups carry beer, lager, cider and most cocktails (pint-to-line gives you the perfect head, pint-to-brim maximises soft-drink volume). Half-pints handle spirits, wine, and shorter serves. Two-pints are the operational change for high-volume bars peaking above 200 serves a minute, halving the trips a customer makes to the bar during a headliner slot. Stackables are the patented design that lets customers interlock and carry four drinks in one hand, which is the queue-busting option when bar throughput is your constraint. Most festivals order a mix: pints typically 70-80% of the order, half-pints 15-20%, with two-pints or stackables filling out the rest. If you want a steer on the right blend for your event, drop the numbers in the quote form and we'll talk it through.

How many cups should you order? Three numbers determine the answer: drinks per attendee per day (4-6 at a beer-led event, 2-3 at a family event), event length, and whether you're running deposit-return. For a single-use, no-rotation model at a 10,000-attendee one-day festival drinking ~5 pints each, that's 50,000 cups raw. For the same event with a deposit scheme and 4x rotation through commercial wash, you only need ~12,500 cups in the bar's stock pool. Multi-day events typically plan for 1.5-2.5x unique attendee count to absorb peak rush plus rotation lag at the wash station. Hand us your attendance, day count and bar setup and we'll model it for you in the quote response.

Is a deposit-return scheme worth it? For most events at scale, yes. The standard UK festival deposit is £2-£3 per cup. Even at a 30% non-return rate, the held deposit revenue typically funds the cup buy outright. Cups that don't come back become souvenirs that attendees take home, which keeps your festival's branding circulating around the country for the next twelve months as uncosted walking advertising. Cups that do come back go through commercial wash and straight back into rotation. Both outcomes work in your favour. If you're new to deposit schemes we can walk you through cup-spec, quantity and rotation logistics on the quote call. The same logic applies to branded venue cups and stadium concourse cups (see our <a href='/products/stadium-cups'>stadium cups range</a>).

Branded or plain? IML or screen print? You've got two print options when branding. Full-colour IML (In-Mould Labelling) embeds the artwork into the cup wall during moulding, so the print becomes part of the cup itself: never fades, peels, scratches off or washes out across hundreds of dishwasher cycles. There's no per-colour upcharge, so a four-colour photographic festival design costs the same to print as a single colour. Single-colour screen print is the cost-effective option for clean wordmarks, simple logos and shorter runs (one-event cups, lower MOQ). Plain stock cups are unbranded, ship in 5 working days, and work well for community events, generic deposit-return schemes or last-minute bar top-ups that don't need custom artwork. For a deeper read on print methods, see our <a href='/our-news/cups-with-your-logo-complete-guide'>cups with your logo guide</a>.

How quickly can you get them? Three lead-time tiers. Standard branded cups deliver in 10 working days from artwork sign-off (most events booked four to six weeks ahead). Eco Saver delivers in 25 working days at the lowest unit price (most festivals order pre-season on this tier to lock in the best price). Plain UKCA-marked stock dispatches in 5 working days from our UK warehouse for in-season top-ups. For genuine sub-48-hour emergencies (last-minute lineup announcements, late sponsor sign-off), our sister brand expresscups.co.uk handles emergency printed stock on the same UK production line. Free UK mainland delivery is included on every order. The mistake we see most: orders coming in late not because the buyer left it late, but because the artwork sign-off chain inside the festival or sponsor stalled. The factory can move in 10 working days; your internal approval chain often can't, so send the artwork to your sign-off team early.

How cheap can festival cups get? Pricing scales with volume. The cheapest reusable festival cup at high volume is the half-pint single-colour print on the Eco Saver tier, at £0.33 per cup at 2,000 units. Full-colour IML is higher per cup at the entry level but tightens up at scale. Volume tiers kick in at 50, 250, 500, 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000-plus units. Most regional festivals sit between 5,000 and 50,000 cups; large multi-day weekenders order 50,000 to 250,000. Submit your specific cup model, print method and quantity via the quote form and we come back inside the hour with an exact price.

Why UK manufacturing matters. Every cup we ship is moulded and printed at our Tees Valley plant. UK manufacture is why we can hold a 10-working-day standard lead time and absorb late artwork or quantity changes that imported cup suppliers can't. It's also why every pint and half-pint cup carries both UKCA (Great Britain) and CE (EU) legal-trade marks at the fill line, which is the regulatory requirement for serving alcohol on licensed premises. Material is BPA-free polypropylene, food-grade, 100% recyclable at end of life. Each cup replaces between 100 and 250 single-use disposables across its lifetime. Whether you're ordering 500 plain pints for a community fete or 250,000 fully branded festival cups for a flagship summer weekend, you're buying direct from the manufacturer with no broker, agent or reseller in the chain.