March 2009 This guide is to introduce basic marketing principles and bring these to life with real examples that can help you increase the consumption of school meals in your school.
This guide is designed for anyone involved in providing a school lunch service in England.
Marketing is all around us – on the high street, in magazines and on billboards. By using a few of the same ideas that household names use, we can help you get the right foods to the right people, in the right place, at the right time and at the right price.
We know that some of you will have run marketing activities for many years, whilst others may be wondering what marketing has got to do with school meals and be unsure where to start. We hope this guide will help you achieve our common aim: selling more healthy meals to more pupils.
The designs below are available to download on MADGe – the Marketing and Design Generator, an online library of industry-designed marketing materials which can be personalised by school and situation. You can download and design their own posters, letters, stickers and even online advertisements with fun, exciting themes and designs tailor-made for use in schools.
Click the relevant link below to download the required resource.
A fresh look at marketing school food
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 1,277KB)
Communication to parents
Letter to parents communicating school lunch service offering
Download this letter and save it as a word document on your computer. For further reference, please refer to page 11 in your guide.
Letter to parents communicating school lunch service offering
Click here to download (MS Word doc 27KB)
Letter to parents inviting them to a tasting day
Download this letter and save it as a word document on your computer. For further reference, please refer to page 11 in your guide.
Letter to parents inviting them to a tasting day
Click here to download (MS Word doc 25KB)
Leaflet template for pupils and students to take home to parents
Download this leaflet template and save it as a PDF document on your computer. You can simply print them off and write on them, or copy it into your own appropriate artwork software (e.g. MS paint, PowerPoint etc. – click here for instructions how to do this) and update it with your own message to parents for your pupils or students to take home. For further reference, please refer to page 11 in your guide.
Leaflet template for pupils and students to take home to parents
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 452KB)
Poster template to advertise dining environment messages to parents
Download this poster template and save it as a PDF document on your computer. You can simply print them off and write on them, or copy it into your own appropriate artwork software (e.g. MS paint, PowerPoint etc. – click here for instructions how to do this) and update it with messages about your revamp of the dining area, where parents congregate such as at the school gates, or at parents evenings. For further reference, please refer to page 11 in your guide.
Poster template to advertise dining environment messages to parents
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 711KB)
Parent taster pack
The Parents Taster Resource has been specially designed to provide advice and guidance about running school meal tasting sessions for parents and carers. All the guidance and resources to help you run a session are available to download here, including posters and invitations, step-by-step guidance on how to run a session, ideas on when to run it and how to evaluate effectively. For further reference, please refer to page 11 in your guide.
Parent taster pack
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 4,494KB)
Communication to pupils and students
Poster template to advertise competition messages to pupils
Download this poster template and save it as a PDF document on your computer. You can simply print them off and write on them, or copy it into your own appropriate artwork software (e.g. MS paint, PowerPoint etc. – click here for instructions how to do this) and update it with your own message to pupils about any competitions you are running. For further reference, please refer to page 13 in your guide.
Poster template to advertise competition messages to pupils
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 1,940KB)
Grab and Go poster template
Download these poster templates and save it as a PDF document on your computer. You can simply print them off and write on them, or copy it into your own appropriate artwork software (e.g. MS paint, PowerPoint etc. – click here for instructions how to do this) and update it with your own message to pupils or use it as is to communicate the fact that pupils can now take food away with them from the dining area. For further reference, please refer to page 20 in your guide.
Grab and Go poster template
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 1,640KB)
Cross-promotion poster template
Download this poster template and save it as a PDF document on your computer. You can simply print them off and write on them, or copy it into your own appropriate artwork software (e.g. MS paint, PowerPoint etc. – click here for instructions how to do this) and update it with your own message to pupils or use it as is to communicate what meal options are available as a ‘package’ and that cost less when bought together than of they were bought separately. For further reference, please refer to page 24 & 25 in your guide.
Meal Deal
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 1,792KB)
Buy One Get One Free
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 1,559KB)
POS templates of a menu and a tent card
Download these templates and save them as PDF documents on your computer. You can simply print them off and write on them, or copy them into your own appropriate artwork software (e.g. MS paint, PowerPoint etc. – click here for instructions how to do this) and update them with your own menus to print out in whatever format suits you best, either flat, or as a tent card to stand on the tables. For further reference, please refer to page 26 in your guide.
A4 Menu
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 1,793KB)
POS Menu
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 4,527KB)
Loyalty Card template
Download this Loyalty Card template and save it as a PDF document on your computer. You can simply print them off and write on them, or copy it into your own appropriate artwork software (e.g. MS paint, PowerPoint etc. – click here for instructions how to do this) and update it with your loyalty scheme criteria. Don’t forget to buy and ink block, stamp and to sign each stamp too to avoid misuse of the scheme! For further reference, please refer to page 32 in your guide.
Loyalty Card template
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 328KB)
Survey templates
Download these questionnaires and save them as documents on your computer. Evaluate which survey is most appropriate to your own situation and then print out as many copies as required. For further reference, please refer to page 35 in your guide.
Primary pupil survey template
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 54KB)
Secondary pupil survey template
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 52KB)
Primary parent survey template
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 50KB)
Secondary parent survey template
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 48KB)
Marketing plan example
Download this marketing plan example and save it as a document on your computer. It should help you to structure your own appropriate plan that fits with the activity you have planned ahead for. You could put it up in your office to refer to throughout the year for inspiration or just to act as a reminder to start planning your own activities! For further reference, please refer to page 41 in your guide.
Marketing plan example
Click here to download (Adobe pdf doc 434KB)
Importing pdfs into PowerPoint
Adding text using PowerPoint is a simple technique, just follow our simple instructions below.
- Download the required template and save it to your computer
- Open a blank PowerPoint Presentation
- From the toolbar select…. Insert Object
- From the menu that appears select Adobe Acrobat Document
- Click OK
- Locate the template you saved previously on your computer and select open
- This will open the pdf document in a new window – go to that window and close the document
- This will then return the pdf into PowerPoint
From there you can add text to the template using the Text Box Tool, save and print the document as you would any other.
