Module 4 - Fresh Look at Promotions and Merchandising

An Array of Promotions

Intro Video:

Offering kids plenty of great fruits and vegetables provides them with choices for healthy eating habits, and hands-on, experiential nutrition education is a fun and memorable way for children to learn about those fruits and veggies. Many school nutrition directors, servers, and kitchen managers use a variety of creative ways to provide interactive nutrition education and introduce an array of fresh fruits and vegetables at breakfast. Nutrition education in the cafeteria, café, or serving area can be affordable and simple, and can provide great reinforcement for any nutrition lessons teachers are doing. And what’s more, these efforts can lead to something larger that involves the whole school and community. The biggest of ideas often grow from one smaller great idea. Borrowing creative ideas from other districts, other kitchen managers, enthusiastic teachers, or from the Internet is a fantastic place to start. Remember, experiential, interactive nutrition education is one of the most important keys to creating long-lasting healthy eating habits in our children.

Do you and your staff:

Welcome each student to breakfast?
Introduce new fruits or vegetables for breakfast periodically?
Talk about how fun it is to try new things and even model trying new fruits and veggies yourself.
Introduce and promote new fruits or vegetables as “taste-test” samples?
Conduct fruit and vegetable preference surveys for student feedback?
Visit community or school meetings to promote new fruits and vegetables served at breakfast?
Work with students to plan a menu or promote new produce items?
Talk to teachers about integrating an in-season produce you’re featuring into their lessons and activities?
Highlight in-season fruits and vegetables in the meals that are being grown in the school garden.

Promotion Ideas…Planting the Seed

Utilize point of sale (POS) merchandising
Try friendly suggestive selling
Post nutrition information in cafeteria or other high traffic areas
Hang colorful signage and other eye-catching visuals
Adorn staff with visors or buttons that promote a featured f/v
Write menus using a thematic approach
Advertise choices for students, such as Student’s Cream of the Crop or Top Picks
Give variety in presentation and displays
Highlight fruits or vegetables first on menu
Feature fruits and vegetables at the center of the plate
Make connections with the school’s curriculum, for example squashes and berries for Native North American or potatoes for Ancient Civilizations studies.
Highlight fruits and veggies you are serving that are also being harvested from the school garden.
Try out a vegetarian menu
Package produce in see-through containers (breakfast shot from SD MS)
Use baskets and fabric to add to decor (Mantica)
Garnish food for interest (Ventura, Mantica, or Carpinteria)
Bountiful is best, keep serving containers full!

Boost Your Breakfast Participation

Video Clip:

Our goal is to encourage kids to eat more fruits and vegetables at breakfast. We want to maintain or increase the number of students eating school meals, and offer lots of fruit and vegetable choices. To reach these goals, cafeteria, classroom, and community must all be connected. And remember, cafeteria and classroom opportunities are found both indoors and outdoors. Staff and administrators can be effective role models as well. The meal program is efficient and high-quality, and part of the education day. And, the program is self-supporting, because the delicious, nutritious, and attractive meals are the preferred choice of students. Ideally, a school meal program is linked to and supported by the entire school and community. They work together to create the school wellness policy, which supports the school meal program, to ensure children’s overall health and well-being.

A Dozen Ideas - Promoting fruits and vegetables for breakfast is a healthy move!

Try simple suggestive selling. It’s an easy and very effective strategy for marketing your produce. Integrate easy promotions that reward students with stickers for trying new fruit and veggie options. Facilitate community and special school events that feature taste tests of fruits and vegetables you are promoting. Have students plan and conduct a promotion, creating that classroom connection. They can also use the school bulletin or newspaper to advertise the promotion. Work with student groups to create menus. It’s a great way to involve students, build in student feedback, and get buy-in. Include fruits and veggies grown in the school garden in your menu planning for breakfast. Repeat opportunities for kids to try new fruits and veggies. The rule of thumb for developing long-term healthy eating habits is this: try, try again. Offer students samples of newly-featured fruit or vegetables as many times as possible, before serving it as a menu item. Whether they get to try the new produce in the cafeteria or the classroom, sampling helps ensure success.

Keeping the momentum going for your breakfast program by creating a strong community relationship…

Take advantage of the fact that kids love to prepare food, and they are more likely to eat a fruit or vegetable if they prepared it themselves. By collaborating with teachers, this food preparation can connect to science, social science, math, or language arts academic standards and add an interesting dimension to lessons. Make use of the resources and programs offered by Harvest of the Month. This monthly sampling program features in-season fruits and vegetables, and is great fun for kids, kitchen staff, and teachers. Take students on field trips to local orchards, farms, farmers’ markets, or even grocery stores. These can be amazing opportunities for discovery, experiential learning, and student feedback. Get feedback by using one of the simple surveys from the array of resources. Create interest and excitement with seasonal events, such as special guest appearances from celebrities or farmers, or schoolwide health fairs that involve community members.

Getting Buy In

Getting Buy In …

Staff, teacher, administrator, parent and community support are a must in order to successfully market your breakfast program. Word of mouth advertising and role modeling are invaluable as well. Try any of these ideas to garner the support you need.

Promotions

Let students create signage or other promotional materials
Have a schoolwide contest using HOTM resources
Include students when writing the morning bulletins promoting the next day’s featured fruit or vegetables
Encourage the participation of teachers to plan advertising campaign

Outreach and Training

Provide hands-on training with site supervisors and managers
Create an in-service training for staff and administrators
Take breakfast to the school board meeting…An evening breakfast!
Set up field trips into community to orchard, farmers’ market, or even a grocery store.

Inclusive Planning

Ask student groups to survey other students about menu choices…students get student feedback
Provide samples of all the new FV to teachers and administrators. Ask their opinion about the new produce.
Use school websites, or email through the school meal payment system, to communicate with parents
Encourage service staff to participate in promotion planning

Role Modeling or Mentoring

Take pictures of the activities and efforts at each site, recognize and celebrate accomplishments and successes
Collaborate with teachers as role models for students. Ask them to review the school menu with the class and to discuss the importance of eating fruits and vegetables.
Create an incentive for teachers, administrators and other staff to come and eat breakfast
Work with coaches to promote a training breakfast for all students

Clip 1:
Getting Buy In … The Four “C’s”

In the Hawthorne School District, what’s really worked for us is thinking big about promoting fruits and vegetables, and helping kids make the healthy choice when the healthy choices are presented to them. And so in order to accomplish that, we’ve come up with this concept called the three C’s. The three C’s are: cafeteria, classroom, and community. And in the middle of the three C’s is, of course, the child. It’s really the four C’s. Because we want to impact the health of kids, and we want them to make the right choice, the healthy choice, when that healthy choice is presented to them. So we offer promotions in the cafeteria, in the classroom, in the community. Of course, the support of teachers, school administrators, and our food services director, Anna Apoian, is very forward-thinking. She’s a registered dietician, she thinks about the business side of food services as well as the nutrition side, and that’s really important. To garner community involvement, the first thing we had to do was change our mindset. And the typical mindset is, “We’re here by ourselves, we’re on our own, oh no, what do we do?” So we really had to think in terms of there is community partners out there that want to work with us, that want to help kids, that have kids of their own that probably go to this school. So, it just took asking those first couple of times, “Will you partner with us? Will you come to our nutrition night?” And we got a couple of yeses, and it just kept ballooning from there. We also use a local farm as part of our salad bar promotions. They provide the produce for the salad bar, and then they come out the next day and do a little guest speaking in classrooms, so that the kids not only get to taste the produce that’s grown on the farm, but they also get to see a real farmer and ask questions. It’s really neat. And, of course, then we’ve got the local grocery store that helps us promote our Harvest of the Month program. They donate fruit baskets for our special events, and they come out and do some nutrition education for our parents and the community, too. So, we’ve just got community partners like that really sincerely want to help others, and it just took that first initial step of making the phone call and asking, “Will you help us?”

Clip 2:
Getting Buy In … From Students

The other day I was at the breakfast bar at my school, and I saw these melon slices on the counter. They all looked really delicious. They were cut into these cool, long wedges. But what really got me to try one of them was the fact that there were these whole melons right next to the slices. There were also delicious fruits and vegetables all around the melon slices. It got me thinking, “You know what? I’m gonna try a melon slice.”

Yesterday morning they said that they were gonna have different colored apples for this week’s breakfast. That’s fantastic. I love apples.

Hey, wow. The café is serving cherry tomatoes today, some of which were grown in the school garden. That’s pretty neat. Me and my friends have been watching them grow, and now we actually get to eat them. That’s very cool.

So, one of the servers taught me a really neat way to eat this. Reminded me of ice cream. Scoop it out like this. Then she challenged me to eat it without tearing the skin. I’m still working on that part.

You know what our cafeteria served for breakfast this morning instead of potatoes? Sweet potatoes. I love sweet potatoes and yams. They’re just so delicious and easy to eat. And they fill me up, too.

Whether you involve your school and entire community in promoting fruits and vegetables for students at breakfast, or you start on a smaller scale, with a focused promotion in your cafeteria, you’ll get students to try fruits and vegetables for breakfast. And encourage kids’ healthy lifelong eating habits you’ll see every day.

Bright Ideas From Others

Simple, creative marketing strategies that got kids to eat more fruits and vegetables.
Anne Gaffney says "A simple, creative marketing strategy that we’ve implemented this school year is to have colorful baskets in our cafeteria, so that when the students come join us for breakfast, they’re seeing a table full of fresh fruits, whether they’re canned fruits, or dried fruits and fresh fruits, they’re all in different baskets. Baskets just like this. We also label each basket with a tag, so the students can see which fruit we’re offering, and then it’s written out for them to read as well, so it’s part of an educational experience. Besides just having colorful baskets in our cafeterias, we’ve painted canvases and put them on the wall. Different colors, primary colors to make it real bright and exciting. And with those canvases we put every day pictures of the fruits that we’re offering. So they see it as they’re coming down the cafeteria line, and then they look through the cafeteria line and see all the fresh fruits that we’re offering. So it’s not only changed to offer more fresh fruits and vegetables to the students, but it’s also changed the attitudes of our staff. They’re excited about serving produce in such an exciting way."

Using a versatile piece of equipment like the Produce Stand.
Kelly Martin says "We purchased a produce cart, and the produce cart was very similar to what the students would see in the grocery store. When the students come through the lunch line now, they pick up their meal tray, and on the meal tray they have all of their requirements that they need to be able to create a reimbursable meal. And then they stop at the produce cart, where they’re able to shop for fruits and vegetables. Sometimes we’ve incorporated things that they might be less likely to be familiar with, so that we introduce them to new fruits and vegetables. One of my staff members stands by the produce cart, has that personal relationship with the students, and is able to be there to answer questions and to guide that student through their lunch process. The addition of the produce stand has changed the atmosphere within our cafeteria. Our students are very happy, and are more eager to eat what they’re choosing, rather than having it placed on their plate. And myself and my staff have seen a large increase in the consumption of fruits and vegetables. We have actually more than doubled our fruits and vegetable consumption at breakfast time, which very much pleases us, and makes our staff and our community very proud of what we’re doing."

Placement of visually appealing produce at point of sale really works!
Mary Tolan-Davi says "At the high school level, we found that by putting attractive baskets of assorted fruits on our serving line right at the point of sale, we’ve increased our fruit consumption and students have really enjoyed the variety of nice fresh fruits and vegetables that we have available to them. It’s a great way to get our kids consuming more fruits and vegetables, and I think that availability in a very attractive and colorful fashion is the way to go."

Module 4 - Comprehension Check