Custom packaging company in New York

Standing out on New York's retail floor

New York gives a product less time to make an impression than almost anywhere else. A serum from a SoHo studio lands on a Fifth Avenue counter next to brands with national ad budgets. A cold-brew label fights for a shelf inch in a Williamsburg bodega cooler. A subscription box gets filmed for an unboxing in a Bushwick walk-up before the customer has read a word of copy.

Custom-printed cartons, rigid boxes and mylar pouches let a small New York label control colour, structure and finish so the product reads deliberate rather than drop-shipped. With a 100-unit minimum, an indie brand can put the same soft-touch box on the shelf as a prestige house without committing to a warehouse full of stock.

The foam ban and why New York food brands go fibre-first

New York has taken expanded polystyrene off the table. New York City's ban on single-use foam foodware has been enforced since January 2019, and New York State's ban on expanded polystyrene foam food containers and polystyrene loose-fill packaging took effect on January 1, 2022. For a deli, ghost kitchen or packaged-food brand, foam clamshells and foam trays are simply not an option any more.

That pushes food packaging toward fibre. Packlic builds the compliant alternatives in board that meets FDA 21 CFR 174 to 178 for direct food contact: kraft and white SBS cartons, grease-resistant folding boxes, and corrugated E-flute mailers you can print full-bleed inside and out. FSC-certified stock with full chain-of-custody is available on request, and corrugated and paperboard are accepted in New York City curbside recycling, which matters when your customer is the one sorting the waste.

Box formats New York brands order most

Which format fits depends on whether you are shipping, shelving or gifting. Packlic builds four core structures, each spec'd to your size:

• Mailer boxes in corrugated E-flute that ship flat and fold without tape, the standard for DTC and subscription drops moving through the postal network.
• Tuck-end cartons in lightweight white SBS for retail shelf products, cosmetics and single-serve food, the lowest cost per unit and the fastest to print.
• Rigid setup boxes, chipboard wrapped in printed paper, for prestige beauty, spirits and gifting where the box is part of the product.
• Mylar pouches in metallized barrier film with resealable zips for coffee roasters, supplement lines and licensed operators.

Everything prints edge-to-edge in CMYK plus Pantone, with matte, gloss, soft-touch, foil, spot UV and embossing available. Kraft reads natural, SBS holds sharp print, rigid chipboard carries structure, and mylar adds a moisture and oxygen barrier for anything that needs a shelf life.

Compliance for New York's licensed cannabis market

Adult-use cannabis packaging in New York answers to the Office of Cannabis Management under 9 NYCRR Part 128, and the rules are specific. Retail packaging must be child-resistant, tamper-evident and resealable, must avoid any design that could appeal to anyone under 21, and plastic retail packaging has to carry at least 25% post-consumer recycled content. Packlic builds the compliant box structure and the compliance-panel area, with child-resistant closures certified to the federal 16 CFR 1700.20 poison-prevention standard and recycled substrates where the plastic-content rule applies.

We produce the packaging only and make no health, dosage or legality claims; your team owns the label content and the regulatory copy. Child-resistant certification records stay on file for your compliance team.

Delivery across the five boroughs and the tri-state

Packlic works from an office in Brooklyn, New York, and ships finished stock to Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Staten Island and out into the wider New Jersey and Connecticut tri-state market. Local delivery runs 2 to 5 days after production on standard carrier transit. We do not run our own trucks, so we quote one honest window rather than per-borough delivery times we cannot verify.

Production itself is 7 to 10 business days from the moment you approve artwork, with rigid setup boxes needing 10 to 14 days for the extra assembly. Before any of that, you get a free 3D mockup in about an hour and a written quote inside 24 hours, so nothing runs until you have seen it.

Minimums and how pricing scales

The minimum order is 100 units, low enough to launch a New York product without warehousing 10,000 boxes. Small runs carry a premium because plates, setup and make-ready cost the same at 100 pieces as at 100,000; as the run grows, that fixed cost spreads thinner. A simple mailer that runs near a dollar at 100 pieces falls toward $0.13 per unit at 50,000, with rigid boxes at the top of the range and tuck-end cartons at the bottom.

The wholesale tier opens at 1,000 units. Every quote is spec-specific, so send your size, material and finish and you will have exact numbers within 24 hours. Indicative ranges by format are in the table below.