Your Digital Pack
How to Promote the Service & Theme Days to Parents & Children
Increasing your school meals uptake
There are many ways you can promote the Dolce lunchtime service to your parents and children.
Read on for our top tips and ideas on how to achieve high meal and theme day uptakes within your school.
Along with an extensive menu and flexible choices, we also attract pupils and parents to the service through the following:
Increasing Uptake Digital Flyer
We have created a digital flyer solely designed to help you increase your uptake. It can be used throughout the year and maybe extra useful in the weeks running up to the end of the summer terms for Y2 pupils.
It is sure to create impact and grab the attention of your parents as it details the annual average cost savings that can be achieved by either switching to or keeping with a hot school meal…and the savings are significant.
How to communicate this to your parents:
- Email a copy to all parents
- Display it on your website
- Post it on your social media
- Print a copy and include it in book bags of children in Y2 (about to exit UIFSM funding)
To download the flyer, click below. Right click on the image and press save to use it in your promotions.
Promo Days
We have a number of promotional days you can invite your parents to attend and we are delighted to share some new tips on how to utilise them to your advantage in order to increase uptake.
- Parents Eat Free – There is no better way of showing your parents how tasty your school meals are than letting them try one. That’s why we offer a buy one get one free offer where pupils can bring in a parent or grandparent to try a Dolce school dinner. We highly recommend offering this to your parents on key seasonal days such as Mothers Day, Fathers Day & Valentine’s Day. All you need to do is let us know when you would like to offer this and to how many pupils and we do the rest. You can even go through every class in a school year if you like!
- We can provide you with a digital flyer to promote the above to your school displaying the specific date you are hosting the event on. Please provide at least 2 weeks notice when requesting these.
- After School Tasters – During term time, why not arrange some after school tasting sessions for parents that might be interested in switching to a Dolce hot school meal. Please get in touch with your Area Manager to arrange this if you feel there is interest across your parents to attend one.
- New Intake Tasters – We recommend running these tasters for a chance to show new parents the terminals and answer any questions (e.g. around dietary restrictions and allergens, etc.
Theme Days
We have some advice for promoting your school theme days to encourage a high uptake.
An A5 Flyer will be provided in digital formats:
- Can be printed within the school (if you wish) and placed into book bags to help drive uptake
- Can also be attached to your email to parents promoting the theme day(s)
- …and/or sent to them via your comms platform if you use one.
Theme Day Competitions
Occasionally we will host competitions to drive engagement during our theme days. Your school can use this opportunity to run a school-wide promotion of the event to find your lucky winners.
After this, the winners from each school can be entered into a national draw to win plenty of Dolce prizes such as vouchers, themed hampers and speciality items, for instance:
- ‘Into The Wild’ Day winners received a one year ‘adopt an animal’ subscription for their local zoo.
- Wimbledon Themed Lunch winners were rewarded with a junior tennis racket of the same make as Andy Murray!
- Our short story competition winners received their work in a published hardcover book.
Further Instructions
How to use your new digital promotional tools within an email.
We recommend that you do the following when creating your email to parents in order to maximise awareness of your theme day(s):
- Create an email introducing the theme day in question and the date it will be on.
For example, if the Census Day was on 7th October and the theme was ‘Space Day’ the title and opening paragraph of the email could be ‘Census Day – 7th October – Themed Menu = Space Day – Important Information’ - Download your promotional tools i.e: the A5 poster/menu (open and then right-click and press save) and any relevant competition information if available.
Attach the A5 poster/menu to the email and explain within the email that the menu is attached. - Send the email to all of your parents once you are happy with your wording, to ensure maximum meal uptake numbers on the day.
Other Ways to Promote the Service
Your parents can now receive regular meal inspiration on the Dolce Instagram community page. We recognise that parents have a difficult life to balance – work, the school run, cooking, housework, washing uniforms, homework, the list goes on! Often, parents run out of ideas of what to cook that is quick and easy to make, yet nutritious and tasty. This is where our Instagram community comes in! It was created to:
- Provide parents with much-needed help creating ideas for what to cook after school despite busy lives/hectic schedules
- Build a positive relationship between your parents and the Dolce brand
On there, parents will receive:
- Regular recipes
- Fun posts to brighten up busy parent’s days
- Competitions
All recipes/meal planners are created by our Food Services team, with nutrition, fun and ease of cooking in mind.
If you would like to invite your parents to follow the community, you can direct them to:
Competition Time
Every year we host popular Christmas card and recipe designing competitions amongst others. Prizes range from days out at Go Ape! to mountain bikes and games consoles, with additional prizes for the winning school.
When these competitions are due to take place, we will provide you with the tools to promote it (as mentioned above).
Community Engagement
Dolce goes on tour! Our Area Managers and Nutrition and Menu Department bring an educational evening event to the schools we cater for. This encourages parents and pupils to cook together with some fun, healthy and easy to cook recipes straight from the Dolce menu bank.
Please get in touch with your Area Manager or via customercare@dolce.co.uk.
Herb Gardens &
To encourage new flavours and food experiences, as well as light gardening experience.
Seasonal Vegetable Patches
In partnership with schools we provide experienced gardeners to work with the pupils to create a space where vegetables can be grown, for use in food cooking classes or our cooking.