16 Creative Food and Drinks Packaging Design Ideas for 2024
Packaging plays an integral role in marketing food and beverages. If you’re in the process of launching a new product or rebranding an existing range, we’re here to help! Here’s a roundup of the best packaging for food products to get your creative juices flowing.
Check out these examples of award-winning food and drink packaging to help your brand succeed in 2024.
Featured: Eat Your Mouth Off
1. Loud and Lively Cereal Packaging for Gen Z
While it might induce migraines for millennials, this vibrant packaging from Eat Your Mouth Off has driven serious growth for the brand in the turbulent breakfast cereals market. Name brands are losing out to own labels, so WK Kellogg has taken up the challenge to get a foothold on crowded retail shelves. The Eat Your Mouth Off brand has brave, in-your-face packaging for their 100% plant-based cereal that couldn’t be further from the ever-conservative Corn Flakes packaging.
You can even get Eat Your Mouth Off swag, including branded bucket hats and sliders… because why not?
Featured: San Paolo Gelato
2. Über Classy Ice Cream Packaging
Eat your heart out, Häagen-Dazs, ice cream packaging has never looked so distinguished. The striped lid and beautiful, deep colours of San Paolo Gelato make these frozen treats so much more sophisticated. The font is simple yet timeless, calling to mind classic gelato served on the streets of Italy enjoyed by generations before. This food packaging design also provides delivery and retail opportunities for the growing European brand.
Featured: Lick Me I’m Delicious
3. Custom Boxes for Edible Experiences
Ever wondered what you’d look like if you were made out of chocolate? We hadn’t either, not until Lick Me I’m Delicious came around. The brand creates incredible edible experiences and is responsible for imaginative inventions, including the Chocolate Selfie Station. We created these simple printed cartons to let event-goers show off their chocolate doppelgänger, including a QR code to help attendees connect.
Featured: Recchiuti
4. Elegant Printed Retail Bags for Chocolatiers
Less is more, and US-based chocolatier Recchiuti knows it. The unique typography, soft ivory finish and ribbon handles make these printed bags and branded boxes truly beautiful. Custom gift options are also available via their website for people celebrating milestones, holidays and other special occasions. This enables customers to gift beautifully packaged chocolates while staying on-brand.
Featured: Burger King
5. A Refreshing Rebrand for Burger King
Fast food packaging relies on ease of use for quick service and convenience. While much of the innovation in this sector has already taken place — cartons for fries, greaseproof paper for burgers and paper bags for meals — we think Burger King nailed their recent rebrand. The funky, soulful lettering married with bold colours makes this packaging part of one of the most successful fast-food restaurant rebrands in recent memory.
Featured: Tipsy Macarons
6. Sophisticated eCommerce Packaging for Sweet Treats
Nothing says “classy” like this colourful, gin-infused confectionery. We think this packaging from Tipsy Macarons is a perfect match for these little delights, leaning heavily into retro influences. The brand screams sophistication with the foil blocking on the brand name to the pastel-coloured artwork, making the product instantly novel yet upmarket.
Featured: The Perfect Pop
7. Totally Tubular Packaging for Popcorn
From cinemas to sofas, popcorn has been an ever-popular snack with consumers for decades. Demand shows no sign of slowing down, as the gourmet popcorn market makes fantastical flavours of this low-calorie snack available — and who could resist this packaging? The Perfect Pop pulled out all the stops with a unique take on popcorn packaging, doing away with paper bags in favour of a stackable, snackable design.
Featured: Tidal Rum
8. Golden Hour with Rum Gift Set Packaging
Alcohol miniatures make great presents. As with any gift, the packaging is part of the sentiment, which is why we love the packaging for this Tidal Rum set. The bottles are an innovative dome shape and are corked instead of sealed with a plastic cap, adding a hint of quality where it matters.
The labelling is simple and colourful, letting the contents of each miniature bottle do most of the talking. For the box, a teal base with yellow-lined detailing looks like a topographic map of some far-off island where the sunsets last forever — lovely!
Featured: TOAST
9. Eco Monochrome Coffee Cups from TOAST
Packaging design might seem simple for disposable coffee cups, but there are several aspects of sustainability that are often overlooked. Not here, as TOAST commits to its green ideals with bold black and white packaging.
To make coffee cups leak proof, they must be lined with a moisture resistance material, typically a plastic-based lining. This is common practice and highly effective, but it hampers recyclability and biodegradability. Instead, TOAST opted for biodegradable coffee cups with an aqueous coating, a relatively new coating that’s being quickly adopted by the packaging industry. It’s water-based, so degrades naturally, and has the same moisture-resistant qualities as plastic, only without any of the environmental drawbacks associated with plastic linings.
Read the full case study for TOAST
Featured: Buns of Joy
10. Postal Boxes for Delivering Desserts
Cinnamon buns delivered directly to your door sounds fantastic, but it isn’t straightforward from a packaging perspective. Keeping food fresh when sending it via mail requires the right packaging, and Buns of Joy nailed it with these postal boxes. Printed with heartfelt messaging inside and out, it’s easy to see how Buns of Joy is delighting their customers.
Greaseproof paper keeps the buns fresh in transit, while paper void fill stops them moving around in the external packaging. Finally, the recyclable postage box makes it easy for customers to dispose of the packaging responsibly.
Featured: White Rabbit Pizza
11. Playful Pizza Box Packaging
Standing out on the shelves in shops and supermarkets is a challenge for many brands, especially those entering competitive markets. We helped White Rabbit Pizza create packaging that made their range of pizzas, doughballs and flatbreads instantly recognisable, putting their stamp on the retail market. Plus, the cutout section on the pizza packaging helps consumers see exactly what their food looks like.
Read our case study to learn more about this awesome pizza packaging.
Featured: Good Shots
12. Colourful Shelf-Ready Packaging for Beverages
Shelf-ready packaging needs to serve several purposes. This makes packaging design a priority — the right design will allow products to move quickly, safely and efficiently through the supply chain. It’ll also mean they’re displayed neatly on retail shelves and recyclable when they’re ready to be disposed of. Good Shots certainly hit each of these targets. The corrugated packaging protects the products in transit but can easily be opened to display the bottles for sale — a win-win!
Featured: Zima Russian Restaurant
13. Artful Printed Paper Bags for Takeaways
Printed paper bags offer an opportunity to maximise brand exposure at a low cost. The world is your oyster when you have a large printing surface to play with, and this unique, artistic design for Zima is right on the money. The minimalist design of black ink on kraft paper means the paper bags can be printed cost-effectively and without over-using resources to create striking packaging.
Related: What Is Accessible Packaging?
Featured: Doh
14. Super Cool Boxes for Cookie Dough
Baking at home is a hobby for many and a profession for some, but it can be messy, unsuccessful and ultimately not enjoyable — especially if you’re short on time. That’s where Doh has positioned itself perfectly in this market. The clean aesthetic and modern design for this bake-at-home cookie dough product from Doh looks as good as it tastes. The simple white boxes with the speckled design are subtle yet enticing, and the packaging is recyclable at home for added convenience.
Featured: Cellar Rats
15. Extra Strong Shipping Boxes for Wine Subscription
If you’re shipping breakable items, you need the right packaging. We used printed double-wall cardboard boxes to securely help Cellar Rats ship wine bottles. This is incredibly important for the online-only brand as customer retention relies on exceptional service and reliable deliveries for every order, like many subscription-based offerings.
The direct, straightforward copy paired with the sketched artwork and simple use of red-on-kraft printing makes no-nonsense, incredibly appealing packaging.
Related: How to Create Stylish and Sustainable Custom Subscription Boxes
Featured: BOTH Burger
16. Creative 50/50 Packaging with BOTH Burger
In 2024, sustainability is on the minds of most consumers. This is where the BOTH Burger presents an interesting idea — a delicious burger patty with 50% grass-fed beef and 50% all-natural veggies. The founders of these semi-plant-based burgers were unconvinced that most meat eaters would commit to becoming vegetarians with meatless patties, so they’ve given people who are on the fence about going vegetarian or vegan a realistic way to cut their meat consumption.
We think the packaging has perfectly encapsulated the brand’s vision, with a bold split in the blue and white colourway, inviting photography of the food, and handwritten copy to make the contrast all the more inviting. The overall effect is incredible shelf appeal, making the product an enticing alternative to 100% beef or 100% veggie burgers.
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