Printed Lunar New Year bags for Los Angeles, in red and gold for the Year of the Goat.

The busiest weeks of the year for many LA kitchens

For a lot of Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean families in Los Angeles, the new year is the biggest food holiday of all. Chinese New Year and Tết start on Saturday, Feb. 6, 2027, and the Year of the Goat begins. Korean families mark Seollal the same weekend. In Korea the day falls on Feb. 7 because of the time zone.

Bakeries sell boxes of pastries and sweets to bring to relatives. Markets stock up on fruit, candy and gift boxes. Vietnamese shops sell bánh chưng and bánh tét. Restaurants take catering trays and big family orders for reunion dinners. Pick up lines run long in Chinatown, and the same goes for the San Gabriel Valley: Alhambra, San Gabriel, Monterey Park and Rosemead. In Koreatown, markets and bakeries get ready for Seollal.

Every one of those orders goes to a family table. A plain bag says nothing about who cooked. A red and gold bag with your shop name looks like part of the celebration.

Red and gold on kraft, the honest version

Good news first: red and gold are two of the best colors for brown kraft. Warm ink on warm paper looks rich, not washed out. The real order proves the red part. Its bright red came out a warm brick red, bold and easy to see.

Now the honest part. Gold ink on our bags prints as a warm mustard ochre. It is not metallic and it is not foil, so don't design around shine. Use gold for borders, coins, hoa mai petals and lettering, and let the red do the heavy lifting.

Small text holds up too. On the real bag, the street address is fine print and still easy to read. That matters if you want your name in two languages, with Chinese characters, Hangul or Vietnamese marks like the ones in Chúc Mừng Năm Mới. Turn your fonts into outlines before you send the file so every mark stays in place. You get full color edge to edge, up to 12 × 14 in on the front.

The parade that brings the crowds to Chinatown

The Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles lists its 128th annual Golden Dragon Parade for Saturday, Feb. 13, 2027, running from 1 to 4 p.m. The route starts on Hill Street at Temple, turns onto Bernard, then comes back down Broadway to Temple. The chamber counts more than a hundred thousand people along the route, plus more watching on TV.

That's a week after the new year, and the crowd gets hungry.

Source: Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles, 128th Annual Golden Dragon Parade event page. Times and route can change, so check the chamber's page before the day.

When to order for Feb. 6

Boxes usually arrive 3 to 4 days after they ship, and shipping is free. The new year comes just a few weeks after January 1, so get your art final early in January, not the week before.

If you want to test the colors first, order the Kraft Discovery Box: 50 printed bags and 50 food tamper-evident stickers to seal family orders. Bakeries and markets that move hundreds of orders should look at the box, 150 bags for $85 on Subscribe and Save, or the bundle, 300 bags for $152.

Each bag is 110 GSM kraft, 12″ by 7″ with 3.5″ gussets and 14″ tall, rated to 22 lb. That's room for a catering tray, a fruit box or a stack of pastry boxes. For the rest of the city, see our home page for printed bags in Los Angeles.