Last year was our first time doing an Ice Cream Social at Meet the Teacher night. We didn't charge. We are definately doing it again this year. The parents and teachers loved the idea.
We used to do ice cream floats on Open House night, but without air conditioning it got to be quite messy. Also, Open House was set up at about the same time that most people were going to eat supper so a few years ago we changed to a dinner. We serve pop and pizza by the slice now. We even make a couple hundred dollars at it. This year we decided to go a little further and are working on plans to have a free cookout(hotdogs, chips, pop). We thought it would be nice to make everyone's first impression of the PTO a good one by making Open House a BIG deal and not have our hands out for money. Hopefully we can get it all put together. If you can swing it financially I would opt for making the event free or at least just have a donation bucket.
We do an icecream social at our September budget vote general meeting. Last year was the first year, and we had nearly a quarter of the membership there. It did not take long, we charged a dollar per bowl and they could have a ton of toppings we brought (we broke even) and we socialized. Overall, I think it went well. The only problem we had is it was about 80 degrees so it melted quickly.
We are wondering about offering ice cream to parents and children on our Curriculum Night. We aren't thinking profit, just a small welcome to the school. Do you think it would work? Has anyone else done this?
