Plastic cups get ordered by the pallet from thumbnail photographs and judged in one second by a hand. These four checks close the gap.

Name the resin first

PET is glass-clear, rigid, glossy — and it crazes white under a hard grip and splits when cold-shocked. PP is faintly hazy, flexible, quiet — it bends and comes back. Both photograph identically and both get sold as clear plastic cups.

Squeeze the wall of one you already own. The crackle answers the question no listing will.

Ask for the wall gauge

Sturdiness is a number. Flexibility is the resin. Conflating the two is exactly how thin cups get sold as tough ones and rigid cups get sold as sturdy ones.

A gauge on the quote turns an argument about feel into something anybody can check with a set of scales and a case count.

Check the rim, then the lid

A rolled rim is a smooth bead that de-nests a sleeve one-handed and seats a lid with a click. An unrolled rim jams the sleeve into a column and pops lids in transit.

Quote cups and lids together, matched by rim diameter and roll profile, and run the upside-down test before a pallet exists.

Then work out what you can actually pour

Cup sizes are rim capacity, measured to the brim of an empty cup. Take off a sensible fill line, then take off the ice, and a sixteen becomes about a ten.

Pours per case is the number your bar budgets against. Get both figures on the quote and the whole costing stops lying to you.

Finally, buy against a file

Resin, gauge, rim, lid, print and PMS held on record is the only thing that stops a cup getting quietly thinner between runs.

The cup is simple. Buying it well is a spec sheet, and now you have one.