How to ship cookies in the mail so they arrive whole

Which cookies ship well

Dense, dry cookies travel best. Soft, frosted or filled ones are the ones that arrive as crumbs.

If your best seller is in the last three rows, the packing matters more than the cookie. Ship a test batch to yourself before you ship to a customer.

How to pack cookies for shipping

• Cool them fully. Warm cookies give off steam inside a closed box, and steam turns a crisp cookie soft.
• Keep soft and crisp apart. Wrap them separately. The soft ones lose moisture to the crisp ones.
• Use a rigid inner container. A tin or a sturdy paperboard box, not a bag on its own.
• Leave no gaps. Fill every empty space with tissue or crinkle paper so the cookies can't slide.
• Pad the outer box on all sides. Cookies in a tin that rattles in a big box will still break.
• Ship early in the week. A box that sits in a depot from Friday to Monday is the one that goes stale.

The right box for shipping cookies

You need two boxes doing two jobs. The inner box holds the cookies and is the one your customer sees. The outer box survives the truck.

Here's where it goes wrong. A printed folding carton looks great on a shelf, but it's too thin to mail on its own. Put it straight into a bag and the first parcel stack crushes it. For the inner box, a custom bakery box or a custom folding carton works when it sits inside a stronger outer box.

• Mailer box. Corrugated and self-locking, strong enough to go in the mail with nothing around it. A custom mailer box with a paperboard insert suits a gift set.
• Shipping box. A tape-sealed outer carton for several inner boxes or a heavy order. See custom shipping boxes.
• Kraft board. Fine for most cookie brands, but pale colors print duller on it. Custom kraft boxes explains which inks hold up.

What the post office says about food

USPS defines perishable matter as anything that can deteriorate in the mail and lose value. Under the Domestic Mail Manual, mailable perishable items go at the mailer's own risk when they're packaged as required and can arrive in a reasonable time. In practice, that means two things for cookies: pack so nothing moves, and pick a service fast enough that they arrive fresh.

If you sell cookies rather than gift them, your state's rules for selling homemade food also apply, and they differ from state to state. Check yours before the first order.

Box size changes the postage

Carriers bill on the greater of actual weight and dimensional weight. UPS works out dimensional weight as length x width x height divided by 139 on daily rates, then rounds up to the next pound, per its shipping dimensions and weight guide. A 10 x 8 x 4 inch box is 320 cubic inches, which bills as 3 lb. Two pounds of cookies in a box twice that size bills as more. Empty space costs money, and cookies don't need it.

Not sure what size you need? How to measure a box covers which number goes where.

When not to order custom cookie boxes

• You're sending a dozen cookies to a friend. Any tin and a spare box will do. Custom boxes start at 50 units per design.
• You need them this week. Production takes 10–12 days from proof approval, and shipping is on top. Use stock boxes now and switch to custom for the next run.
• You're still changing the recipe. If the cookie's size or count keeps changing, the box will too. Wait until it settles.

If you ship the same cookie every week, send us the inside dimensions of your tin or stack, or a photo of it on a ruler. Structural design is $0, and you only pay once there are boxes to pay for.