Dairy wins back-to-school and tailgating season

During the fall back-to-school and tailgating season, Midwest Dairy teamed up with several retail partners to drive demand for dairy products across the 10-state region. As part of Midwest Dairy’s strategy to leverage key moments throughout the year, the back-to-school season provides an ideal opportunity to remind families that dairy offers both nutrition and convenience, making it a natural fit for lunchboxes, snacks, and quick breakfasts. Midwest Dairy leveraged a second key moment, tailgating, to remind shoppers that dairy belongs at every celebration.

Cub Foods

This fall, Midwest Dairy partnered with Cub Foods to spotlight two flavorful campaigns that put dairy at the heart of family meals, game-day celebrations, and seasonal traditions. The Fall Cub Magazine featured dairy-filled recipes, including a “Cheesy Fun Time” tailgating spread, showcasing real cheese favorites. Cub Foods continued the theme with “Say Cheese” shoppable banner ads and social content encouraging shoppers to dive into the cheese aisle and rediscover the joy of Real Cheese = Real Delicious.

Together, these campaigns tapped into the top five drivers of consumer food and beverage choices today – taste, price, freshness, healthfulness, and convenience – delivering half a million impressions and strong visibility for dairy during a key moment.

Hy-Vee

Midwest Dairy partnered with Hy-Vee to put cheese front and center during tailgating season, connecting dairy to game-day favorites and driving strong results for Midwest dairy farmers. The campaign brought together leading cheese brands alongside complementary items like buns and meats, creating a full-store experience that made it easy for shoppers to build the perfect tailgate spread. The campaign used a strong mix of digital and in-store tactics to meet shoppers wherever they planned to shop. These efforts included off-site and on-site digital ads, weekly email banners, shoppable recipes, and in-store signage, ensuring dairy stayed visible from online browsing to checkout.

Together, these tactics generated more than three million impressions and drove over $195,000 in incremental dairy sales. The campaign delivered more than 551,000 incremental pounds of milk sold, turning digital engagement into real value for dairy farm families. Notably, 89% of conversions happened in-store, where dairy performs strongest, showing the power of pairing digital inspiration with physical retail presence. From trusted brands to crowd-pleasing recipes, this tailgating campaign showed how strategic partnerships and seasonal moments can drive demand, celebrate dairy, and deliver measurable returns for farmers across the Midwest.

Schnucks

Midwest Dairy once again partnered with Schnucks Markets to support its annual back-to-school marketing campaign, helping families discover easy, nutritious meal ideas during one of the busiest times of the year. This collaboration positioned Schnucks as a trusted destination for simple school-day solutions and highlighted how dairy foods can help fuel students from morning to night. The campaign reached shoppers across multiple touchpoints, ensuring they saw dairy messaging no matter how they planned their meals.

Midwest Dairy once again partnered with Schnucks Markets to support its annual back-to-school marketing campaign, helping families discover easy, nutritious meal ideas during one of the busiest times of the year. This collaboration positioned Schnucks as a trusted destination for simple school-day solutions and highlighted how dairy foods can help fuel students from morning to night. The campaign reached shoppers across multiple touchpoints, ensuring they saw dairy messaging no matter how they planned their meals.

Neptune Retail Solutions + Chicory + Instacart

Chicory, a third-party vendor, drives sales growth through recipe inspiration. It turns online recipes into interactive experiences by allowing shoppers to add ingredients directly to their online grocery carts. Online recipe use has surged, with 91% of shoppers using recipes regularly. Midwest Dairy partnered with Chicory to bring dairy front and center through Back to Sports messaging. Results from the Chicory campaign included 4.6 million impressions with over 57,000 clicks on the ad for a clickthrough rate of 0.12%, driving over 5 million incremental pounds of milk sold.

Neptune Retail Solutions is a third-party vendor that supports in-store signage across retailers in the 10-state region. Data shows that 86% of grocery trips take place in physical stores, and 46% of in-store shoppers are inspired by displays and signage. Midwest Dairy teamed up with Neptune to “Create the Ultimate Game Day Spread” through aisle blades. In total, 896 stores featured signage in the cheese aisle, including Kroger, Hy-Vee, Jewel, Schnucks, Fareway, and Price Chopper, resulting in over 1.5 million incremental pounds of milk sold.

Midwest Dairy partnered with Instacart – the largest online grocery marketplace in North America – to connect consumers with personal shoppers who deliver groceries from local retailers straight to their doors. Through search and shoppable e-commerce display ads, the campaign drove 3.3 million impressions, with 94,000 clicks and an $18.30 return on ad spend.

By leveraging key moments, such as back-to-school and tailgating, Midwest Dairy partners with retailers to develop strong campaigns with dairy-focused messaging that drive millions of incremental pounds of milk sold for farmers while reinforcing dairy as a go-to solution for consumers.