Promotion and marketing are essential in attracting students and driving sales in your canteen.
These terms are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct meanings:
Marketing: Marketing in the canteen involves understanding your students preferences (and then developing products that meet them). Marketing vegetables includes elements like market research (student survey), product development (new recipes), pricing (making vegetable products less expensive than unhealthier alternatives).
Promotion: Promotion is the way you communicate and persuade students about a product, in this case a new vegetable menu items. The primary goal is to persuade, and remind students about the benefits of a product. In this case VEGETABLES.
On this page you will find resources to help you market and promote vegetables, so they become the focus of your menu, increase your sales and of course increase the consumption of vegetables by your school community.
What’s menu architecture you ask? Menu architecture is about how the menu is organized and presented to your customers. It includes the arrangement of items, categories, and descriptions such as:
- Categories: Grouping items together like recess, lunch, after lunch sales, drinks.
- Descriptions: Providing clear and enticing descriptions of items.
- Pricing: Displaying prices clearly and consistently.
- Layout: The physical layout of the menu, such as font, size, and colour choices.
- Imagery: Using pictures or graphics to showcase items.
When we look at the menu architecture for school canteens with a focus on vegetables there are so many things we can do to make vegetables the hero of the menu.
These tools and resources will help you promote vegetables in all their glory and create excitement.
Social media tiles: To let the school community know what new ‘vegie packed’ recipes you have on the menu this week or just to share some interesting facts
Newsletter inserts to increase exposure of vegetables and how fantastic they taste and to keep people informed about what you are doing in the canteen
Vegie puns and facts: Spread the LOVE of veg in Social media posts, on the canteen menu, on posters or in newsletters.
VegKIT: The FOR THE LOVE OF VEG project builds on the findings of the VegKIT project. VegKIT is funded by Hort Innovation and focuses on ways to encourage kids to eat more vegetables. VegKIT has a variety of tools and resources readily available that focus specifically on canteens.
See the VegKIT website
Recipe Database
A collection of recipes that are packed full of veg. Tip: browse by vegetable type.
Learn More
Tools & Tips
Everything you need to help add more vegetables to the school canteen menus.
Learn More
Promotion & Marketing
Ways to attract students to the canteen and sell more vegetable-packed menu items.
Learn More