Kelly Parthen of Madison, Wisconsin writes:
“My partner and I are opening Bean Sprouts, a new kids’ cafe outside Madison, Wisconsin. We would love your readers’ help coming up with some fresh ideas for our grand opening.
“It will specialize in freshly-made, healthy food for children, along with adult-friendly food and coffee. Its mission is to spark children’s appetites for good-for-you food, while providing a happier meal for parents. Bean Sprouts will also serve freshly made organic baby food, as well as provide a weekly baby food delivery service.
“More information is available on our website.
“We’re planning a week’s worth of fun events for families such as a PB & Jammies day in which everyone wears pajamas, a dinner theater with a puppet show, a book/cook club that features a story time with a coordinating meal, and taste tests in which participants can taste samples and guess the secret ingredient.
“We need more ideas. Can your Hounds help?”
Wow! What a great opportunity to engage the community in some creative fun! Set up a craft table where the kids can color in coloring pages with your whimsical characters adorning them. Make up cardboard cutouts of the characters, let kids color them, add glitter and adhere a magnet strip to the back. The cute characters will also have the name of your restaurant on them reminding parents whenever they look at the fridge to bring their kids in for a healthy meal. If you can associate healthy food with fun you’ll gain some patrons for a lifetime.
Have a large glass jar full of beans and get kids to guess how many beans there are. The winner gets some free dinner passes or some item of clothing with your cute logo on it. Sell mugs with your characters on them for a low price……this is advertising and will remind your customers of your cafe.
Birthday party events could include a healthy meal and a quick craft such as crowns and tiaras or magic wands.
Have a fish pond with dollarstore prizes. Instead of it being a fish pond you can draw and paint your characters on the board.
Cheers,
Violette
Are there any well-known children’s musicians in your area who would like to perform at your cafe at your grand opening and/or on a regular basis? Often, these musicians sing songs about food. For instance, kids (and parents) in the DC-Metro area love a band called Milkshake. Maybe someone can write a song just for Bean Sprouts about the joys of eating vegetables.
How about letting kids do the “cooking”? Plan an event with kid-friendly meal prep, provide mini chef hats with your logo and a take home kitchen utensil (wooden spoon, etc.)
Love the concept.
Seems to me you can’t beat a contest on opening day.
Just don’t know what your budget could be for this.
So I don’t know how GREEN can you go!
But I would think about laying the GREEN theme on as fast and thick as you possibly can.
Most have a general grand opening but think about the already green niche and cater to them:
Hybrid Owners and Bean Sprouts
Fuel Green Driving Habits Contest
Bean Sprouts Names “Yummy Bean Sprouts” Eating Champion
Bring Your McDonald’s Receipt Get A
Free “Happier Meal” For The Kids
At Bean Sprouts
“Beanology For The Ecology” Contest
Sprouts Up At New Wisconsin Eatery
Have a bean sprouts contest monthly.
Children enter the contest by planting a bean in a pot with their name on it and the tallest one in a week wins, etc. The next month, the first one that sprouts leaves wins.
Another time, place the bean in a damp paper towel and place in a ziplock bag & the first one to sprout through the paper towel wins.
Hopefully they will be bringing their parents by daily to check progress of their “farm.”
The contest can be photo entries another time. Plant the bean of their choice at home and photograph progress a couple of times within a month. They can be in the garden, or windowsill.
Select a different “Jack (and the beanstalk)” for “sprouts” promotions such as spokesperson or judge, in a separate promotion.
If you have a display storefront window, place them there. (Check with your local health department if “soil” is allowed in the restaurant.
Co-Op Marketing Contacts
Both of these groups would be excellent partners and do a lot of radio interviews etc.
You promote them and ask them to promote you. Offer to add their products & info into your grand opening and as “stock items.” In return, ask them to mention you in their upcoming interviews and/or by connecting you with one or two of their media contacts. (You would also mention them when you are interviewed.)
Susan Smith Jones: Dynamic, down to earth expert on nutrition. She has written two fabulous books for kids called Vegetable Soup The Fruit Bowl.
Offer her books at special pricing (and as a regular stock item) during your grand opening. http://www.SusanSmithJones.com
Two Angry Moms is another excellent fit for you and would follow the same model as above. Help them get their word out and ask them to help you.
http://www.angrymoms.org/inner/media-news.html
Dec. 7, 2006 — “When two mothers found out what their children were being served in the school cafeteria, they did something about it.”
VegiHead PhotoActivity Idea
People love to have their photos taken and to stick their heads into funny costumes and scenes.
Have an artist make up single vegetables – a child could stick their head in the hole and actually be a “carrot head!” You could make up a “Salad Bowl” where the entire family could be in the photo.
Then give them the photos for free (in exchange for their contact info – newsletter datamining.) Finally, at the bottom of each photo have your business name, address and phone number in LARGE easy-to-read type. (10-12 pt min)
This photo will end up on their fridge and be a constant reminder of you!
Good luck,
Viveca Stone-Berry
Author, The Fatigue Be Gone! Guide
love the concept and think it will be a winner.
Children love to create recipes and a children’s recipe-contest seems like a natural. Have monthly winners who compete for the year’s finalist, which will be adapted for menu inclusion.
Should draw community interest, press, etc.
Lovely idea.
Focus all your promotions on the child.
Buy two children’s meals, get an adult meal free.
Buy 1 children’s desert, get a coffee free.
Children’s size portions at slightly less than adult prices.
And make it a great place for adults so that people like us are not tortured while there with their little darlings.
I would get children to plant a vegetable garden at a school, church or maybe a park.
This would be sponsored by Bean Sprouts
My idea is a spin on several of the others. If you have a “Young Chefs” instructional school, you can host cooking demonstrations with the school’s kids.
The demos will be a visual that TV stations will like. If any of the kids are in the public school system, you can pitch the local public school TV station on a story featuring their kids cooking. I have received a lot of TV coverage through our local public school station.
Finally, consider having students from a local community college production class shoot footage of your opening events as a class project. This is a good way to get free, high quality video produced and broadcast yourself. Even if you don’t get media coverage you have a great marketing tool for the web and other distribution points.
Best,
John
Great ideas so far. I can barely say hello in 20 minutes and you have got my interest piqued. I love the challenge of a BRAND NEW IDEA. Kudos to you.
First of all, remember that originality can be the entrepreneur’s worst enemy. Do your R&D – that’s “rip off and duplicate.” If it worked for someone else, odds are good it will work for you.
The primary reason McDonalds introduced happy meals was not only to serve a new market. Their goal was to capture the kids at a young age so that they would become loyal customers for life.
I’ve had dozens of experiences creating special events for children. If you can entice the kids, their folks always come. When you have worked out the kinks, be sure to hand deliver invitations to your major print and broadcast media outlets. Unfortunately, reporters are often overworked and underpaid and see their young ones far too little. If you create one event (Sunday’s are good), where you focus on bringing in the media and their kids, y
you will get a story about the grand opening. But go ahead and have a one-sheeter prepared for future media opps they may have interest in.
And, as our publicity hound has taught us, if we don’t think of ourselves as selling a product/service, but realize that we ARE the experts in many areas – table manners, how to get your kids to eat the stuff they think they hate, easy, affordable meals to replace a trip to the fast food joint, getting a child interested in cooking/baking, and on and on.
Also, every holiday, have a special offer/event that becomes the list to get on. Don’t overlook “be kind to your boss” day – the media would love to film kids making cookies for their mommy’s bosses.
One more thing, your home page needs to SELL. You need to capture their interest, engage them, and get them signed up for a $47 dollar grand opening event that is donated to a childrens’ charity – a prelaunch for your restaurant can be very enticing.
I love this idea. And having fed children, I’d suggest many of the items on your menu be finger foods. Kids love to eat with fingers, and dip pieces into something too.
Why not have a “Vegetable Critter Contest? At a salad bar cut vegetables to be used as body parts for a creature of the child’s making. Small cucumbers, or pickles could be used for bodies, cherry tomatoes for heads, carrot and celery sticks and string beans could be used for limbs (or tail). Use toothpicks to hold the critters together and have a choice of dipping sauce — salsa, pesto, melted cheese, or other healthy dips, etc available.
Take a picture of the finished critter, put it on a board and have the children vote for their favorite. You may want to have something like every $5 spent on by a party gets you one vote.
For the prizes you could have a free lunch or dinner, dessert, or another trip to the Critter’s salad bar.
Be sure to have local media be present as the votes are counted and prizes given. And have the picture of the winning entry ready.
A variation on this is to have a “Winning Smile” contest. This would be to use fruit and vegetables to make a smile. The basic one is two slices of a red skinned apple with one side smeared with peanut butter. Then place golden raisins between the peanutbutter sides of the apple slices. Presto a delicious smile.
You can have variations and do the same as the Critter contest above. We’ve used peach slices with halved grapes held together with cream cheese.
Good luck.
What a lovely idea! In the San Francisco Bay Area where I live, holiday themed teas for children are popular. At Christmas, there is the Sugarplum Fairy tea, with the making of sugarplums and other holiday candy a special treat for the kids. At easter, it’s the Teddy Bear tea, where the little ones bring their favorite stuffed animal and participate in an egg hunt. At Halloween, it’s a Gingerbread House making tea.
This idea is infinitely adaptable to different holidays. Japan has a national “Children’s Day” and Sweden a Young Misses Day that I know of. You could raise awareness of other cultures in kids by celebrating some of these with special lunches or teas, and alos highlight the goodness of seasonal produce featured in full meals.
I too like the idea of a percentage of these events being donated to children’s charities. Don’t forget canned goods and/or clothing collection bin for homeless kids. I’d keep a bin constantly on the premises for this purpose – it’s never too early for kids to learn about social responsibility.
Best of luck!
Thank you so much for all of your fabulous ideas! I will check in with Joan to let all know how the grand opening goes.