I love my market day products but i could never shop there for a months worth of food!!My average market day runs from $40-$80 and i usually get 4-7 items. So i have to agree with everyone else i can't see it having an effect on your local groceries. I have volunteered with our market day for over a year now and its the same people who order every month--this month we only had 40 orders. The last school district we were in cut market day because they couldn't get enough volunteers to run it---unpacking the food, sorting and filling orders---but the school we are in now has a group of volunteers(myself included) who do this every month. Let us know how your presentation goes!!
I'd have to agree with all of you that I don't see how Market Day will have much of an effect on the local grocers. However, how about if you extend the fundraising to the grocers and ask them to participate in scrips? Our local grocers wanted in on the loyalty angle of our scrips program. Though their gift cards aren't available through the scrip companies, they still sell us $100 worth of gift cards at a discounted rate of $95. We make $5 off of every card,and the local grocer doesn't lose any business. Just a thought...
The notion that doing Market Day will take away from your local grocery stores is really ridiculous. The Market Day items are quite different. They offer only frozen food items,no household products and no parent is going to do their monthly grocery shopping via Market Day.
We have a school of 300 and our monthly Market Day earnings average around $150. I don't know what the actual participating # of families are, but it is not even close to being 50%. The biggest order placed each month comes from a local business where the employees place an order with us.
I would say the average order placed is between $25-$50. Try surviving on that for a month!
Doing Market Day won't affect your local grocery stores in any way shape or form.
When you present this to your board you can tell them what other schools reported on the matter. Tell them you want to try it out and then you all can reflect on the amount of items ordered and if you see that people are buying food by the bundle to stock up for the month and that it will affect the local stores then you will stop doing it. This is really silly...who can live on frozen food alone? Who has a freezer big enough? Who would want to?
The elementary schools in our city have used Market Day for years. Our school has about 440 students. Each month, the goal is to have 80 families place orders. I try to place an order each month and my order usually has 10 items max and my bill is between $50 and $80.
Our city has about 80,000 residents. I think the competition for Market Day is really the warehouse clubs like SAMS and COSTCO. Unfortunately for my checking account, I still spend a lot of money at Costco.
In your presentation to the board, I would just point out that it will probably be a small percentage of people who actually place orders. I've found Market Day to be so convenient that I usually use everything within a week, and then have to wait 3 weeks before the next order can be placed. I still do a lot of shopping at the local grocery stores.
For those of you who have done Market Day... Our school board is very concerned that the local grocery stores will be upset, that Market Day will take business away from them. I have about a week to prepare a presentation for the school board. Any ideas or suggestions?
We are in a small town with 3 grocery stores that do not offer much in comparison to the Market Day products.
