How to guide: Choosing the right reusables

Step one is to choose  how your café will support reusables. There are three main options:

1. Ask customers to BYO a repeat-use cup or mug of their own.
2. Sign your café up to an external cup swap system.
3. Set up reusables ‘library’ for your café.

Supporting BYO reusables is the easiest and most obvious option. There is a reusable out there for absolutely all budgets and tastes – from hand-made, sustainable ceramic cups in one-off designs to mass produced plastic travel mugs and keep cups. Plus, local customers can just grab a cup or mug out of the kitchen cupboard when they duck out for a takeaway cuppa  from your café.

However, the results of the Reusable Café Project show it is not enough to just encourage customers to BYO. Single-use cups are a habit we are hooked on, and even your most sustainable customers may have put their keep cup away when  COVID-19 restrictions were in place and forgot about it.

To really commit to reusables, business owners will most likely need to offer one or both of the options below, as well as actively encouraging customers to BYO.

A reusable swap system is ideal for customers who use order-ahead apps and also a great ‘plan B’  when people forget to BYO. Commercial systems, which require customers to sign up as members and input their credit card details, are becoming more and more available.

Each system operates a little differently, but they all come with extra benefits, like marketing materials, promotional opportunities, system integration, assured cleanliness and external tracking. See the Plastic Free Places Reusable Swap Systems Guide to compare the companies that operate in your area. The guide includes a calculator, which you can use to estimate how much each option will cost.

Alternatively, if your café is in a shopping or business precinct with high foot-traffic, you might want to team up with other café owners to create  a local swap system, allowing customers  to borrow  a cup from one business and return  it to another one as the pass by.  Such a system was launched in Paddington, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, in 2024. See our case studies on Tuckerbox and Wolf for details.

Or you could simply  open your own reusables library. These are just like a regular library, but for mugs and keep cups, as well as plates, jars or bags if there’s a need. Customers can borrow a reusable item instead of opting for single-use packaging and return it on their next visit. To stock your library, avoid buying new items and instead ask customers and local community groups for donations of excess or unwanted crockery, or buy second-hand ones from op shops.

Customers love this idea and often go out of their way to return their borrowed items. Invariably though, your stock will dwindle, but you can simply put a social media callout to your customers to donate a new batch. Once café challenged people to donate their ugliest mug, and many customers accepted the challenge. The ugly mugs became a great conversation starter, too.

Step two is to start actively promoting reusables. Effective signage made a big difference to uptake of new and existing approaches during the Reusable Café Project. Signage encouraging customers to bring their own reusable cups and containers will also clear up any confusion about whether businesses can accept reusables.

Ideally, use your signs to promote incentives (see below) to customers to choose reusables. If possible, have signs designed by a graphic artist (or your local printer) and make them a part of your brand. Frame them and hang them permanently, in highly visible locations, so when customers see the signs, they see your commitment to reusables is   here to stay. If you don’t have the budget to have your own signs created, you can download free signage from Plastic Free Places.

Once you start promoting reusables, don’t stop! Use the signage to start conversations. While you’re encouraging reusables to customers, it’s also well worth suggesting they skip the take-away altogether and dine-in. This is a guaranteed way of reducing waste that also opens the door to upselling food and extra drinks. It gives you more time to build relationships and turn first-time visitors into loyal regulars.

Keep reinforcing your commitment to reusables on your social media accounts to remind customers and to build your brand. You could  even consider an advertising campaign to attract new customers who are aligned with sustainability initiatives.

The final step is to introduce incentives to keep modelling behaviour change to your customers and, in turn, the community.

Selling your own branded reusables can become  a new revenue stream and/or be used as an incentive – you could offer customers who buy one their first coffee for free or give the cups away to those in your loyalty program.

Offering a BYO discount to customers is also likely to get results and won’t impact your bottom line if the discount is based on cost of a single-use cup and lid. Along similar lines, adding a 20-cent single-use surcharge to take-away orders will discourage those who don’t choose reusables.

Starting a loyalty card system, where customers earn a free coffee after buying 9 coffees in a reusable cup (and/or dining in), proved successful during the Reusable Café Project. If you have an existing program, you can replace it before you need to get more cards printed.

Hosting a happy hour during known quieter periods will get customers and their BYO reusables through the door for a discounted hot drink. Offer special deals and take  some time to have a chat to people who come in.  

Grabbing a take-away coffee in a single-use cup is a normalised daily habit. Breaking the habit requires relatively simple behaviour changes that only the boldest of business owners can inspire. Benefits will flow to those who take up the challenge and lead the way.