Student marketers boost school's lunch sales
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — To some high school students, eating school lunch just isn't cool. Others gripe that they don't like the meals, or don't want to wait in line.
Photo courtesy Sheri Kojima
So it wasn't an easy assignment when a group of marketing students at Waiakea High School in Hilo set out to lure their classmates back to the cafeteria. But they did it, using an advertising campaign and prize giveaways to boost the number of school lunches served in September by about a third.
Marketing students, from left, Yui Kanzawa, Anne Matsusaka (holding sign), John Kanazawa and Paul Figueroa (holding a school lunch), offered prizes to encourage their classmates to eat school lunches.
The project was good practice for Waiakea students in the Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA), and was more than just an academic exercise, according to school food service manager Mike Bartelt.
The number of lunches served in September is a statistic used to calculate cafeteria staffing levels for the rest of the school year, so serving extra meals that month helped shield the cafeteria's dozen workers from any staffing cuts, he said.
Waiakea senior Anne Matsusaka, who is president of the state DECA, said she was surprised when incentive drawings for $50 gift certificates at the Prince Kuhio Plaza mall attracted so many students.
The cafeteria served about 8,000 lunches in September, up from 6,000 in September 2002.
"I didn't think that it would go up by 2,000," said Matsusaka, 17. "I thought it would go up a little, but not that much."
Sheri Kojima, who teaches marketing and is adviser for the Waiakea DECA members, said the students sketched out a "Start Living Healthy" campaign in the opening weeks of school to stress the nutritional benefits of cafeteria lunches. Their slogan was "Eat Lunch, Win Big!"
Club members then approached local businesses to ask for cash contributions of $25 or so to finance the effort, and used the $400 they raised to buy gift certificates at the mall. Those were used as prizes in weekly drawings for students who bought cafeteria lunches.
The project got a boost from the school administration, which halted outside food sales on campus in September and limited soda sales on campus to the hours before school started and after it ended, Bartelt said.
"With any incentive, you can push those kids who don't normally eat," he said. But it didn't hurt that they had few other sources of food and beverage, he said.
The number of lunches served fell in October to about 7,300 after the marketing effort ended, but was still about 12 percent higher than October 2002, Bartelt said. He credits the marketing effort for the uptick in lunch sales last month.
In hindsight, Matsusaka said she believes the project would have led to even higher lunch sales if it had been better publicized in school bulletins or announced more frequently over the school public address system.
Next year, club members are considering stationing popular entertainers in the cafeteria to draw more students, and expanding the incentive drawings to include concert tickets, Kojima said.
They also plan to do some detailed marketing surveys to determine precisely why so many students aren't digging into school lunches, she said. But limited surveying this year offered a few clues.
"Overall, the kids said they want Taco Bell and Pizza Hut here," Kojima said.
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916.
