PTOPrezBill - Are you saying that you are going to make the cookie dough yourselves? Do you have a source for the tubs and lids? Where will you store the cookie dough? I know with frozen dough you probably have a bit more flexiblility (storage and time wise) than with fresh dough considering the eggs. Please keep us posted.
Good luck!
Here is a thought. We are looking at doing the cookie dough ourselves this year. The head of the school cafateria and I have been talking back and forth and have come up with some great thoughts. We can make one batch that makes 150 2 doz. cookie tubs. We plan on making these up in advance and having a booth for them in the fall. We will have a form for any extra orders that we need to make up. You may not have the selection that you do for frozen or dry but it sounds like it may work well.
We did cookie dough for the first (and probably last) time this year. One of the other schools in our area had great success with it so we thought we'd try. Our cookie dough came in pre-formed balls in cardboard boxes. The boxes were heavy and many of the little kids couldn't carry them. We delivered to each classroom and then it was the students and parents responsibility to get it home. Some got left at afterschool programs. One teacher "forgot" to distribute it (we replaced those orders for free). It was just too much trouble.
The school that does it here successfully distributes in front of the school and the voluteers stay for a few hours so working parents can come by after work. They say they send home several warnings about how you MUST pick it up. They claim they don't have too much that gets left at the end of the day.
Our spring fundraiser is a Joe Corbi pizza/cookie dough sale. We have only done the cookie dough for 4 years as it was a "new" add on to the Corbi line. We have been very happy with the sale and have been doing it for years because everyone enjoys it so much.
What we do is state that all product MUST be picked up on the delivery date since we do not have any storage facilites. On Pick up day, we take the delivery in our lobby/foyer area and have pickups from 12-6. As a reminder in our newsletter we restate it in bold letters again. NO Storage facilities all orders must be picked up. All in all, we may have one or two orders not picked up and we put them in the cafeteria's fridge. Just be very, very vigilant in your notices about it and you should not have a problem. Happy selling!
I have heard horror stories about keeping the tubs frozen. When someone doesn't pick up the order, you have to find a place to take it. And they are pretty big.
Someone on this board mentioned that they include a statement in their flyer to parents warning that perishable food that is not picked up by a certain time is donated to a shelter. That created some hard feelings when they really had to donate some orders.
The only frozen food company I would work with if I were in charge of this kind of fundraiser is Schwan's Fozen Foods. www.schwans.com/
You take the orders and they park their refrigerated truck in the parking lot. Anything not picked up is not your responsibility. And they hand out the food for you.
I admit, I have worked in food service and the idea of accidently giving someone improperly handled perishable food would drive me nuts.
This seems to be a very popular fundraiser. We are considering it for late fall. My question is....how do you keep the dough buckets frozen until all have been picked up? Do you rent a refrigerated truck? We have a student body of 750 so we would need more than just the cafeteria freezer. Any suggestions?
