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To contact us: 219 S. West St, Suite 100 Syracuse NY 13202 Phone: 315.472.9143 Fax: 315.472.0506
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New Look of School Milk Continues to Grow Farmer-funded research has shown that simply switching from the traditional cardboard milk carton to a plastic, resealable container, can increase school lunch participation and consumption as much as 26%!
It is because of this research that schools throughout the country are partnering with the New Look of School Milk program. In fact, more than 6,800 schools (representing more than 4 million students) now offer single-serve milk in plastic, resealable containers.
Realizing the demand for New Look of School Milk in area schools, ADADC worked with Upstate Farms and Farmland Dairies to sign both processors as New Look of School Milk partners.
The checkoff-funded Loan and Grant Program award ed the two companies, through an approval process by the USDA, with a monetary loan to help in the cost of changing machines from cardboard to plastic. When the program is successful, the loan will turn into a grant.
With two additional New Look of School Milk partners in the region, more and more schools will quickly sign up to be providers of New Look of School Milk.
ADADC knows the importance of keeping milk “cool” and available to students. That is why ADADC works with schools throughout NJ, PA, and NY to arrange for milk vending machines to be placed in schools. These brightly colored machines are a hit with staff and students alike, and allow for healthy snacking to take place at any time of day. Smaller schools can opt to have “3-A-DayTM” machines that sell milk, string cheese, and yogurt.
To help promote the machines, ADADC offers $2,000 grants to schools. Currently, over 60 applications have been received for the 2007 school year.
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Throughout the past year, much attention has been focused on the country’s largest school district, New York City, which serves more than 116 million lunchesand nearly 33 million breakfasts annually. Last spring, New York City Public Schools removed almost all lowfat flavored milk from the menu, except for a fat- free chocolate milk. To help fight for dairy’s place on the school menu, ADADC, Internat- ional Dairy Food Association (IDFA), and MilkPEP have created several strategies to reach out to parents and city council members.
Advertisements In an effort to get lowfat, flavored milk back on the menu in NYC public schools, ADADC launched a “Bring Back Flavored Milk” radio campaign in NYC to encourage parents to contact school officials to request that they bring lowfat, flavored milk back. In addition, several advertisements are currently being played on NYC radio stations speaking about the potential dangers that result from kids not getting enough calcium in their diet – including osteoporosis, high blood pressure, and weak bones.
Grass-roots Events This summer, grass-roots community outreach events are taking place throughout the city to promote the importance of dairy, including lowfat flavored milk, in kids’ diets. Events include the Harlem Food and Fitness Consortium in conjunction with NYC Department of Heath, flavored milk testing and sampling, and School Health Fairs.
Advocates For School Milk Choices (ASMC) Although ADADC cannot use checkoff dollars to lobby, other national dairy organizations (IDFA, MilkPEP) are diligently working to inform local politicians about the importance of flavored milk options on the school menu. The group ASMC was created through a partnership between these dairy organizations, health professionals, parents, local politicians, nutrition researchers, and school foodservice directors. Together, this powerful group has been able to extend the message about a healthy diet, including dairy, to many NYC residents. Due to the efforts of ASMC, District 39 Councilman Bill de Blasio has joined the coalition stating, “As a public school parent with two kids, I know how tough it can be to try and get your kids to drink milk. Eliminating lowfat, flavored milk options in schools has given kids fewer choices and opportunities to get the vitamins and calcium they need.”
NYC Council Supports the Dairy Industry’s Efforts This past winter, the NYC Department of Education reported that since the removal of flavored milk in NYC schools, a 10% drop in milk consumption has been seen throughout the schools. As a result, ASMC and Councilman Bill de Blasio arranged for several well-respected health professionals to speak about the dangers of not getting enough calcium in one’s diet and the benefits of having various dairy options on the school menu during a March NYC Council meeting. These individuals included Professor Keith Ayoob of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Jennifer Ignacio of the Greater New York Dietetic Association. The two health professionals emphasized the importance of maintaining a school menu that includes various dairy options. It is because of these presentations that the NYC Council passed a resolution asking the Department of Education to evaluate the decision to remove lowfat, flavored milk from schools.
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Dairy checkoff continues to grow dairy sales by reaching more consumers through powerful partnerships with industry leaders.
Subway® This spring, Subway® Restaurants became the latest quick-serve restaurant chain to offer lowfat white and reduced-fat chocolate milk in plastic, single-serve bottles on its menu. Subway® introduced the white milk offering as part of its new Subway Fresh Fit™ menu in more than 20,000 restaurants across the country, while the chocolate milk will be available a la carte. The bottled milk will not only be a permanent beverage option for the chain’s child and adult customer base, but it is also available in 12-ounce bottles. This partnership brings the total number of restaurants offering milk in plastic bottles to more than 50,000 nationwide.
Domino’s® Developing innovative new products is key to driving growth of cheese sales in the pizza category. That’s why dairy producers, through their checkoff investment, partnered with Domino’s Pizza® – the nation’s No. 2 pizza chain – to introduce the new Cheesy Garlic Bread Pizza. The pizza offers a garlic bread flavor with layers of cheese, including Provolone and Cheddar, on a buttery hand-tossed crust. The Cheesy Garlic Bread Pizza is available for a limited time at more than 6,000 Domino’s® restaurants nationwide.
Checkoff-funded partnerships with pizza chains extend beyond Domino’s®. Pizza Hut®, American’s No. 1 pizza chain, reintroduced its “Cheesy Bites Pizza” for a 2007 promotion that kicked off on Super Bowl Sunday. Last year, dairy checkoff worked with the chain to develop the product. Producer-funded efforts provided roughly $50,000 worth of culinary and other marketing assistance to help develop the pizza, while Pizza Hut® invested nearly $50 million in the marketing campaign to support the original launch at its 6,600 restaurants across the nation. |
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Getting Your Money's Worth Out Of The 15 Cent Checkoff
Building Life-Long Dairy Consumers
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Since 1984, dairy farmers have been contributing 15 cents for each hundredweight of milk they sell to fund state and national dairy promotion programs. These programs, in which dairy farmers invest more than $250 million in assessments annually, are intended to generate more demand for milk and, as a result, directly increase the income of dairy farmers.
To help increase farmer net revenue, dairy checkoff has been continuously changing to fit the needs of consumers. It was not that long ago when we depended on advertisement slogans as a way to promote our product. Now, dairy checkoff is working together with all aspects of the industry to bring consumers the high quality dairy products they are demanding.
QUICK-SERVICE By working directly with Domino’s®, Subway®, Wendy’s®, Pizza Hut®, and McDonald’s®, dairy checkoff has helped to increase dairy sales. Foodservice chains alone have seen an eight-fold increase in weekly milk sales since switching to milk in plastic bottles. Cheese consumption, due to new menu items, has resulted in an additional 250 million pound increase in sales.
SCHOOLS The New Look of School Milk program, which offers flavored milk in 8-ounce resealable plastic containers to students, has grown to over 7,800 schools (representing more than 4.5 million students) in just a few years. * Toms River School District, NJ: 31% increase in milk sales * Milton School District, PA: Increase of 1,700 milk bottles a week * Canandaigua School District, NY: Increase of over 400 milk bottles per day
RETAIL Creating demand for milk is only part of the equation – it’s the job of the Retail Dairy Marketing and Merchandising Program team to ensure the coldest, freshest milk and dairy products in the appropriate sizes, varieties, and flavors are available in the customer’s favorite supermarket.
Their goal is to sell more milk in food-based retail outlets, and that’s done by assisting both retailers and dairy processors in managing the Milk category. The program targets stock conditions, product rotation, ordering procedures, and store hygiene. (Continued on page 2)
CONSUMER RELATIONS To help drive consumers to retail outlets to buy dairy, ADADC communications staff gives consumers various ways to enjoy their favorite dairy products by creating press kits that feature traditional, seasonal and new uses for milk, cheese, and yogurt. In addition, ADADC created ideas about how consumers could partner dairy with their favorite seasonal produce, especially during those summer parties. Helping in this effort are the hard working members of the NJ, PA, and NY Dairy Princess courts and committees.
MAINTAINING DAIRY’S IMAGE Research shows that in the event of an emergency involving the dairy industry, whether it is the safety of milk and dairy products, animal welfare, or the environment, consumers and parents look to dairy farmers as their information source. ADADC’s comprehensive crisis communications plan prepares dairy farmers and other experts for potential issues facing the industry. It also helps them prepare for positive stories, showing how farmers are good stewards of the land. Recently, ADADC held a media training session for over twenty CAFO planners. This training was especially important as these individuals are often the “go to” people when on-farm practices are called into question. USDA REPORT TO CONGRESS Many dairy farmers and others have asked an important question given the large sums of money involved: Are dairy farmers getting their 15 cents’ worth?
To help answer this question, the federal legislation that created the national dairy promotion program mandates that an annual, independent economic evaluation be conducted. For the past several years, Harry Kaiser, Professor of Agricultural Economics at Cornell University, has done this independent evaluation for the USDA report to congress.
To answer whether dairy farmers are getting their 15 cents’ worth, Dr. Kaiser developed an “econometric” model that evaluates the effects of:
* Generic advertising and promotion that is purchased with the dairy farmers’ 15 cents (like the “Got Milk?” and 3-A-Day campaigns)
* Relative prices of various dairy products plus the price of other beverages people substitute for dairy products
* The amount of disposable income the average consumer has
* How many meals a typical consumer purchases away from home
* Seasonal variations (such as more demand for ice cream in summer)
In this model, the total demand for dairy products included per capita sales of milk, cheese, butter, and frozen dairy products. The results show that the average benefit cost-ratio for the 15-cent checkoff program was $4.33 from 2000 through 2005. This means that each dollar invested in generic dairy marketing during the period would return an average of $4.33 in net revenue to farmers. This proves that the marketing programs supported by dairy farmers through the dairy checkoff program have been a successful investment.
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