Bring students into the school cafeteria with lunch promotions.
Eating lunch at school ensures that growing students get the nutritionally balanced meals they need to continue learning into the afternoon, but getting those kids to purchase their lunch from the school cafeteria can prove to be a hurdle. Encourage students to buy lunch rather than forgo the middle meal by promoting school lunches on campus.
Raffle
Give students who purchase lunches any day during a week of your choice a ballot. On this ballot, the student votes for her favorite lunch entree, she then turns in the ballot before lunch ends the day the ballot was received. The following Monday, a ballot from the week gets drawn and the student whose name was on it wins a prize, and their favorite school lunch can be the entree the following day. Check all ballots that students only write down lunch entrees the school cafeteria has previously served to verify that they meet nutritional standards.
A Prize Inside
Just as children purchase fast food meals based on the toy, encourage them to buy a school lunch by including a special prize or toy. Work with the teachers at the school and give away number two pencils during a testing week so the students who have lunch from the cafeteria will be sure to have a pencil for their tests after lunch. Erasers or small stickers also are inexpensive and can be purchased in bulk from a teaching supply or office store.
Flyers and Posters
Create colorful flyers and posters with photographs of warm prepared school cafeteria entrees. Have these posters professionally made, or ask the art class at your school or a local art specialty school to make the posters as part of a class project which can serve as community service for the students. Hang these posters and flyers around the school campus with the approval of the principal.
Free Samples
At the mall, walking through the food court will likely get you bombarded by vendors from the various food outlets offering small pieces of their featured entree on toothpicks for you to sample. Bring this idea into the school cafeteria by having one of your staff walk through the cafeteria with a tray of tiny bites of a sauce-less entree such as a chicken patty or veggie burger and offer the students samples. This can encourage them to come back the next day to buy their lunch from the cafeteria.
