Halloween is one of the fastest-growing selling seasons for UK bakers and every year, packaging is the thing that gets left too late. Cupcakes sell themselves in October. What turns them from a purchase into a gift, a party favour or a market-stall bestseller is the box they go home in.

Our Halloween 2026 range is live now, with lots of products designed, printed and manufactured here in the UK from food-safe, sustainably sourced board. Here's what's in the collection this year and why ordering in August beats scrambling in October.

New for 2026: the 'BOO!' collection

This year's headline range is our new BOO! collection. A spooky-cute ghost design available in blue or pink, ready to fill with no custom print needed. It includes a single cupcake box with clear lid and printed insert, a square box with printed aperture lid in medium or large, and a show-stopping fillable hamper box with a clear lid and printed insert, perfect for Halloween treat hampers and pick-and-mix boxes. The hamper is available in packs of 1, 5 or 10, so you can try one before committing to a full pack.

Also new this season: the Happy Halloween cupcake box range, with an acetate window printed sleeve in 4pk or 6pk that lets your buttercream do the talking.

Halloween cupcake boxes for every order size

Whatever quantity your customers order, there's a Halloween cupcake box to match. Single cupcake boxes come in the BOO! ghost design or with an aperture acetate window; the deep 2pk box pairs a clear lid with a cobweb printed insert; the cobweb design continues through the 6pk and up to a 12pk cupcake box for party orders. For bite-sized bakes, the 10pk mini cupcake box comes with a clear lid, printed insert, coloured base and matching gift tag, a ready-made gift the moment it's filled. And for something a little different, our black cupcake boxes with printed doodle inserts and lilac cupcake boxes with lilac foiled lids give your Halloween menu a signature look.

Halloween cookie and biscuit boxes

Decorated cookies are a Halloween staple, and the range covers everything from a single ghost print cookie box for individual iced biscuits to large biscuit boxes in two depths (30mm and 50mm) with doodle-printed full lids or acetate window lids. There are mummy and pumpkin print cookie boxes with clear lids and printed belly bands, a wizard print biscuit range, and Halloween and autumn print cookie backing cards with cellophane bags for bakers who sell carded cookies.

Brownie, chocolate and sweet packaging

For traybakes and confectionery, the wizard print range covers brownies, sweets and chocolates with a white base, clear lid and printed belly band. Chocolate makers are covered with the Trick or Treat 6pk chocolate box, a 12pk chocolate box, the pink pumpkin print 9pk chocolate box with full printed aperture sleeve, and mummy/pumpkin chocolate slab bar sleeves for bars and bark. Square 4pk sweet boxes  including a black foiled lid option, handle fudge, honeycomb and chocolate-covered treats.

Libro boxes, hampers and party packaging

Two libro-style cavity boxes bring real theatre to Halloween gifting: the Ghost libro box and the "Book of Spells" libro box, each with a printed full sleeve that opens like a book. For bigger gestures, the pink/blue Halloween hamper box with clear lid and printed belly band suits pastel-spooky branding, while Halloween print gable boxes, the ghost print taper box, handle patisserie boxes and open-style boxes with gift tags are quick to fill for party bags, school fairs and market stalls. Finish the look with trick or treat tags from just £1 a pack.

Pastel Halloween, gothic Halloween — or classic orange and black

Not every Halloween bake wants pumpkins. Alongside the classic black box range with orange pumpkin belly bands, this year's collection leans into two growing trends: pastel Halloween, with pink patisserie boxes finished with a black foil cat logo, pink-based rectangle ranges and colourful printed lids; and gothic Halloween, led by the lilac and black lace print collection, available across multiple box styles — a favourite with bakers selling to adults rather than party bags.

Food-safe, recyclable and made in Britain

Every box in our Halloween range is made from sustainably sourced, food-safe folding box board, and our boxes and non-window lids are 100% recyclable. Our clear lids are made from recycled material and can be recycled again, and even our foil is recyclable. When your customers ask where your packaging comes from and increasingly, they do. You can tell them it was made in the UK, not shipped halfway around the world.

Low minimums, fast dispatch — and why August is the month to order

Most of our Halloween packaging comes in packs of 10 with prices starting from £1, so you can stock a full range without a big upfront spend — ideal for cottage bakers testing what sells. All boxes are supplied flat-packed to arrive in perfect condition, with assembly tutorials on our YouTube channel, and we offer next-day delivery across the UK with free shipping on orders over £100.

One thing worth knowing: because Halloween packaging is seasonal, popular designs and sizes do sell through as October approaches, and as special occasion items they can't be returned, so double-check your dimensions and order early. Ordering in August also gives you time to photograph your bakes in their finished packaging, which sells far better than a cake on a plate.

Get Halloween-ready

Browse the full Halloween 2026 collection now and get your packaging sorted before the October rush. And if you'd like something no one else has, our bespoke printing, foiling and ribbon service can create Halloween packaging that's unique to your business, get in touch to talk it through.

Shop the Halloween range: https://www.elitepackagingcompany.co.uk/ourshop/cat_909959-Halloween.html

You quoted £85. Spent 11 hours. Paid for the gold leaf yourself. Smiled when they collected it — and cried when you worked out your hourly rate.

If that's familiar, you're not bad at pricing. You've just never been shown how to quote bespoke work properly. Bespoke needs its own system — here are the 4 steps.

Why Bespoke Should Be Your Highest-Margin Work

In almost every small bakery, custom work is the least profitable. That's backwards. Every other bespoke industry — tailors, jewellers, framers — charges a premium for one-off work because it's higher risk, higher skill, and has no reusable template. Your custom cakes are in exactly that category. Price like it.

Step 1 — Build the True Cost Stack

Ingredients are only about 30% of what a custom bake actually costs you. Write down everything: ingredients, specialist extras (gold leaf, sugar flowers), packaging, energy, consumables (piping bags, gel colours, parchment), decoration tools, and delivery materials. If it touched the bake, it goes on the list. Most bakers discover the real material cost is 1.5–2× what they thought.

Step 2 — Charge for All the Time

Bakers usually count bake + decorate hours and forget the rest. Count all of it: enquiry replies, consultation, sketching, sourcing, baking, decorating, cleanup, packaging, delivery. A mid-complexity cake is realistically 10–14 hours of work — not 5.

Now multiply by a real hourly rate. Minimum £20/hour. You're a skilled craftsperson running a business — not a volunteer.

Step 3 — Add the Bespoke Premium

On top of cost + time, add a bespoke premium of 25–40%. Custom work carries higher risk, more stress, no reusable recipe, no economies of scale, and almost always suffers spec creep between quote and delivery. This isn't greed — it's what every bespoke industry does.

Step 4 — Quote a Range, Lock With a Deposit

Never give a single firm number upfront. Use this script:

"Cakes like this start from £180 and typically land between £180–£240 depending on the final design and extras. Once we've nailed the design, I'll confirm the exact price."

Then take a 30% non-refundable deposit before you sketch a single thing. No deposit = no design time. If a customer won't pay a deposit, they were never going to be a good customer.

The 4 Steps

1. True cost stack — all of it
2. All the time, at a real rate
3. Bespoke premium 25–40%
4. Quote a range, lock with a deposit

Do this for one month and bakers typically add 30–60% to bespoke revenue without taking a single extra order.

Your Packaging Is Part of the Premium

A bespoke cake deserves bespoke packaging. Handing over hours of hand-painted work in a flimsy generic box undercuts the price you just charged. The box is the final part of the product — the bit your customer photographs, posts, and remembers.

We spec tall cake boxes, tiered cake boxes, and custom-printed postal packaging for UK bakers every day.

Get a custom packaging quote - email [email protected] with what you're baking — we'll tell you exactly what to send it in.