When we attended the expo in Chicago, we found a company that offers a great item to sell during lunch. I can't think of the name (our president kept the flyer) but it is 100% fruit juice no sugar added, plus calcium and vitamin C. They are individual pouches that you freeze and sell them as slushies to the children. They come in two flavors cherry & blue raz. We are going to offer this next year on Fridays I think we make .30 cents a pouch. I think it's going to be a big hit and it is healthy and fun! I will try to find the name of the company and post it, they also had dippin dots available. Anyways it's a nice alternative.

My stepdaughter got a Sno-Cone machine for the day and sold them at lunch once a month throughout the year. They would make 2 to 3 gallons of simple syrop, and on average they could sell 600 to 700 sno-cones over the 90 minute lunches. The biggest issue is having enough ice on hand.

Maybe because we live in Santa Cruz, but our schools don't even allow kids to bring sugar treats with their lunch. We give out snacks that kids have access to every break and they include peanut butter stufft pretzels, organic nuts in various combinations, cut up organic apples and pears (that grow on the school grounds), and various other healthy treats (many bought at Trader Joe's). Needles to say the kids love them. Other yummy things you can sell is 100% fruit bars (on the warmer days) power bars and other kinds of 100% fruit roll ups and bars. Although I don't discourage my kids from eating sweets (their birthday parties are one big smorgasbord of sugar) I feel happy that they don't regularly get sugar every day at school... It is so important to train them to eat good food. For special occasions at our school it is perfectly fine to bring in yummy dugouts and cakes but it is only for those special occasions...

Other potential ideas to sell on a weekly basis to raise money is opening a student store and sell those little toys that you can get from the oriental trading company. Or sell flowers every Friday. I’m sure there will be some families that will order flowers every Friday (and the kids can bring them home).

suz

How about warm soft pretzels? I'm not familiar with what is available in Illinois, but they are a bit here on the East coast. Think about what you can get at a baseball game, football game, circus etc. that the kids love. Bag of peanuts maybe?

In New Jersey, the law extends to any food served during the school day. So class parties are included in the law. Only a special event (like our all day Spirit Day {field day for some}) can have something that is out of the parameters, but we are to watch how much of it is served. If we bring in donut holes, we can only have the plain or glazed and only 2 per child. OTherwise, it's too much saturated fat. Many snacks we assumed would be ok, didn't meet the criteria and so the concept of holiday parties in the classrooms were VERY different this year. If our schools don't comply, we don't get any funding.

Our district's contract with the cafeteria prevents us from selling ANY type of food during lunches. It takes away from what the students would possibly buy from the cafeteria. So when we have our Bagel Sale days, they are first thing in the morning. THe kids can eat them at snack or for lunch--their choice, but we sold them before the cafeteria opened.

So when we have our PTO events in the evening or on Saturday, we can serve anything we want. The kids love it since we break out the cotton candy, popcorn, and other treats that they don't get too often.

I'm in Illinois also and they have a new order in effect that you can't sell things competing with lunch but since the children must eat their lunch first we've been okayed. Also for popcorn and taffy apple day they are delivered to their class. Taffy apples must go home and they can order as many as they like, and popcorn is usually up to the teachers when they can eat it. Normally it goes for an afternoon snack. The kids love the popcorn but having very few volunteers and one popcorn machine it's an all day event so we are hoping to find something to replace that.