9 Pros and Cons of Disposable Plastic Cups and Lids

When guests visit your restaurant, they will naturally want to order tasty beverages that complement your delicious food. In addition to serving the right drinks that please their taste buds, you must also choose the proper containers for serving them.

As you look at your various options, you may be leaning toward disposable plastic cups and lids. This blog will provide a comprehensive examination of the nine pros and cons of these products, helping you make an informed decision during the selection process.

The Advantages of Disposable Plastic Cups and Lids

Serving beverages in disposable plastic cups topped with plastic lids can be a win-win for both your restaurant and your customers. Find out about each of these distinct advantages below.

Portability

One advantage of stocking disposable plastic cups and lids in your restaurants is that they help accommodate those clients who want to take their beverages to go. By providing them with a lightweight, easy-to-carry container and a lid that seals it, you make it easy to commute with their soda, smoothie, or iced coffee.

Durability

Another pro of disposable plastic cups and lids is that they are very durable. For example, if you want to avoid giving your customer a container that is prone to leaking, plastic cups and lids can easily meet your needs.

Plastic makes both the cup and the lid extremely robust, preventing cracks that would result in beverages leaking out. That security will enhance the customer’s experience with your service and encourage them to return to your restaurant for another creamy milkshake or sweet tea.

Eco-Friendly Benefits

If your restaurant is particularly concerned about the impact of its practices on the environment, you may also want to consider adding disposable plastic cups and lids to your stock. When your guests finish their beverages, they can toss the cups into a recycling bin, since plants can easily recycle these materials and grant the containers a second life.

Ordering these products in bulk also offers environmental benefits. Because the cups don’t weigh very much, delivery trucks will release less pollution into the air than if they transported other, heavier products. This choice may help your restaurant catch the eye of green-minded clients.

Cost Savings

Investing in disposable plastic cups and lids can also save your restaurant money. In addition to being relatively inexpensive, your eatery will save money on the expenses it would have incurred for maintaining non-disposable containers, such as buying soap for washing drinkware. Instead, by opting for the disposable route, you can skip what would have been a significant step in your cleaning process.

A Venue of Advertising

Disposable plastics can also provide your restaurant with a valuable advertising opportunity. For example, if you purchased clear PET cups and lids for your restaurant, the transparent nature of the products would work to your advantage. When your customers carry PET cups featuring your appetizing ice cream sundaes down the street, other passersby will see them in all their delicious glory through the clear walls of the containers.

Suppliers of the containers can also add your restaurant’s name and symbols to the side of the cups. These allow customers to carry these pieces of branding with them wherever they go and share them with others. These placements will enable more potential customers to become aware of your business.

Customer Safety

One last reason to use disposable plastic cups is that they can increase the safety of your restaurant. When guests dine in restaurants that use non-disposable glasses and cups, they do it with the assumption that the eatery’s staff has properly cleaned those containers beforehand.

If the employees did not, the guest experience is marred. By stocking disposable, uncontaminated containers that staff will not have to clean, you can protect guests from hazardous contaminants. Your clients will also feel more confident as they enjoy a soda or a margarita from your restaurant’s bar.

The Disadvantages of Plastic Cups and Lids

Although we have seen many pros of using disposable plastic cups and lids, there are some cons that you should be aware of. Review them below so that you can make a more informed decision before purchasing them for your restaurant.

A Slow Degradation Rate

As we established before, using disposable plastic cups and lids can be advantageous to your restaurant’s environmental efforts. However, there are some downsides as well, including the fact that plastic is not biodegradable, unlike some of the other materials used to make other disposable cups and lids.

If a customer purchases a drink in a plastic cup from your restaurant and places it in a regular garbage container, it will most likely end up in a landfill.

The Use of Petroleum

Another downside of using plastic containers and lids is that you will support the manufacture of a product that requires the use of a non-renewable product: petroleum. Meanwhile, restaurants that use paper cups can take comfort in the fact that they are purchasing products made from wood pulp from renewable trees.

Limited Applicability

One last con of using plastic cups is that restaurants cannot use them for serving hot beverages to clients. Although restaurants often use plastic lids on coffee cups, they would not be able to serve their customers’ favorite drip java in a plastic cup. Once the warm drink enters the container, the reaction between the hot beverage and the plastic material may put the customer at risk. A plastic cup filled with a hot beverage is also more dangerous to hold, even with a sleeve.

If your restaurant specializes in serving only cold drinks, you will likely find plastic cups to be a suitable option for all customer orders. However, if you also specialize in providing hot beverages, you will also need to find an option that suits those drinks.

After learning about the pros and cons of these plastic containers and their lids, you can make a more informed decision about whether they will work for your restaurant. If you do invest in them, these containers and lids have the potential to enhance the customer’s image of your eatery and increase brand awareness in your community.