Marketing Your School Breakfast Program

Effective marketing is important to the success of your breakfast program. Although school breakfast offers a variety of benefits, it can still be an uphill climb to get students and parents to buy into the program. If you want your program to reach its full potential, consider using some of these marketing tactics:

  • Get students involved in planning their school breakfast including the menu, marketing posters, and logos

  • Use clubs, courses, and contests to get students engaged

  • Allow students to help with breakfast to earn community service/volunteer hours or certificates/awards

  • Incentive programs like lucky tray for prizes

  • Invite local celebrities and community role models to endorse the school breakfast program ( i.e sports coaches, high school principal, local police officers/firefighters)

  • Celebrate national school breakfast week (https://schoolnutrition.org/nsbw/)

  • Invite students and parents to breakfast

    • Offer samples of School Breakfast items so parents can taste the food their children have at school. Give a tour of the food service department and provide family-sized recipes for parents to take home (if possible, include a nutrient analysis to show how the meals compare with nutrition standards).

  • Plan taste testing events

  • Try some theme days

  • Serve breakfast for lunch

  • Flyers, banners, automated messages to homes, and PA announcements

    • Tomorrow, for breakfast, we will be featuring a new recipe, ____________, which was created by a group of chefs just for you! Don’t forget to come to school breakfast to give it a try.

    • If you like the new breakfast menu items you’ve been trying, you can make them at home on the weekend. They can be found on our school website. This Friday, we are featuring _________________ — don’t miss out!

    • How are you getting your fuel? Eating a healthy breakfast gives your body the fuel you need to play for the rest of the day. So don’t forget to come try school breakfast.

    • Do you want to do better on tests? Everyone does, right? Well, did you know that students who eat a nutritious breakfast score better on tests and improve overall grades? Remember to come grab your school breakfast!

    • The old saying is true: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day! If you don’t have time to eat at home, try eating breakfast at school. Breakfast is brain fuel!

  • Get involved on social media, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (i.e. #schoolbreakfast)

  • Send an informational letter to parents/families explaining your breakfast program

For more information on how to implement these marketing concepts visit:

Sources: https://dairygood.org/content/2015/outreach-guide-for-school-and-nutrition-staff, http://www.newenglanddairycouncil.org/media/School-Breakfast-PA-Announcements.docx