Cafeteria Promotion Ideas « Back

The Dietary guidleines and My Pyramid for Kids recommend 3 daily servings of low fat or fat-free dairy as part of a healthy diet.

Choose from these 3 Every Day of Dairy ideas to promote your breakfast, lunch, a la carte and vending programs to students:

• Threebies: Offer three-cheese pizzas, three-cheese toppings for salads or soup, and three cheese sandwiches.
• Triple-Play Days: Run specials on every 3rd, 13th, and 23rd day.  The 103rd student in line gets a FREE dairy treat.
• Milk Mania Week: Let students guess how many cartons/bottles of milk are consumed during the week.  Enter correct answers in a drawing.  Mark a number of cartons/bottles with one of the letters "3 E-V-E-R-Y D-A-Y of D-A-I-R-Y." When one lucky student is able to spell in the entire phrase, they and a friend win a free lunch.

Here are a couple of breakfast promotion ideas that have been implemented with great success!

Bring a Friend to Breakfast
Increase breakfast participation using an idea from Naperville, Illinois School District in partnership with Sodexho.  Regular school breakfast eaters were encouraged to bring a friend to breakfast. The reward was a free flavored milk and the opportunity to receive a raffle ticket for prizes awarded in a drawing.  Prizes included ‘got milk?’ t-shirts, soccer balls, blinking mugs, boxer shorts, hats, and stuffed cows. The promotion contributed to a positive image for school breakfast and for the students who use the program.

Frequent Buyer Program
Why not apply the ‘frequent flyer’ principle to enjoying 3 Every Day of Dairy? 

A Frequent Buyer promotion provides the opportunity for the School Nutrition Department to work with classroom teachers and students to develop graphics along with marketing and educational efforts, while encouraging the consumption of dairy products as part of a healthy diet.  Naperville, Illinois School District in partnership with Sodexho did it!

To track Frequent Buyers, the School Nutrition Department designed a card that was punched each time a student selected a dairy food.  At the end of a week, students who completed their cards were given a free dairy product of their choice such as milk, string cheese, yogurt.  Then their card was entered into a grand prize drawing.  Signs posted on the lunch line announced weekly winners.  Posters, danglers, and balloons with the benefits of dairy decorated the cafeteria and cashiers wore dairy-themed aprons.