Dairy MAX recently helped restaurant partners increase customers and their check amounts with a National Dairy Month kids menu dairy promotion. Dairy MAX worked with The Original Pancake House locations in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and Cuba Cuba locations, a Cuban-inspired restaurant concept, in Denver.
The promotions focused on highlighting the nutrition and tastiness of milk and other dairy foods on the restaurants’ kids menus to mutually benefit dairy farm families and the restaurants through increased sales of dairy foods.
“Dairy foods like milk, cheese and yogurt are not only a delicious addition to kids’ meals that children love, it’s also a nutritious choice parents can feel comfortable feeding to their children,” Josh Srader, Dairy MAX business development manager, said. “Milk has thirteen essential nutrients, including high-quality protein, calcium and vitamin D, that are great for children’s growth and development.”
The promotion’s success shows that dairy’s experience is a winner for children, its nutrition is a winner for parents and its menu inclusion is a winner for restaurants.
Cuba Cuba’s Recipe for Success
The grant partnership with Cuba Cuba in Denver led to a 28% increase in the restaurants’ check amounts with kids meals, as well as a 3.6% increase in customers during the promotion.
Increasing dairy use by 27%, Dairy MAX’s partnership with Cuba Cuba in Denver saw similar success to The Original Pancake House, but the strategy looked a little different.
Dairy MAX worked with Cuba Cuba to make dairy foods like milk and cheese more central to the options on the kids menu. The menu features milk as the default beverage option for children, with the opportunity to upgrade their drink to a Cuban Batido, a milk- and fruit-based Cuban-style shake.
The kids menu also featured dairy-centric entertainment, including a QR code that lead to a virtual reality tour of a real dairy farm, a cow-shaped maze and various milk-themed coloring elements.
Cuba Cuba took the promotion a step further, expanding dairy-centric dishes across their menu with items like Tres Leches, Sandwich Cubano and Chocolate Quatro Leches. Dairy MAX worked with Cuba Cuba to promote the featured dairy-centric dishes through social media influencers and local food writers.
The Original Pancake House’s Achievement
The activation at The Original Pancake House locations throughout the DFW area upped dairy consumption by about ¼ pound per guest—essentially, guests were ordering more dairy-centric menu items. That equals an increase of 11,000 milk pounds purchased by the restaurant over the same period the previous year.
The partnership between Dairy MAX and The Original Pancake House led to a revamped kids menu that features more dairy-centric items like pancakes made with real buttermilk. The Original Pancake House added more milk flavor options from Volleman’s Family Farm, a dairy farm family who process their own milk and pride themselves on specialty milk flavors. The relationship spurred an option on the kids menu that allows patrons to upgrade their beverage to a pint bottle of Volleman’s Family Farm milk.
The promotion of nutritious, delicious milk also helped drive restaurant awareness. To promote the revamped menus and long-standing dairy-centric dishes, The Original Pancake House ran paid social media posts on Instagram. One video featured a long-time team member of The Original Pancake House showing how to make their famous buttermilk pancakes. The video, which prominently featured buttermilk as a key ingredient, performed nearly 800% better than Reels within the previous year.
Why Include More Dairy Options on Your Menu?
From taste to healthfulness, dairy foods can drive positive experiences for your patrons—and profit for you.
Improve Experience of Profitable Dishes
Dairy foods can easily compliment already profitable foods on your menu to create an even better experience for your patrons. In fact, according to Toast, burgers, pizzas, pasta dishes and sandwiches are all among some of the most profitable dishes for restaurants—all of which already include or are easily elevated by dairy foods like cheese, cream or butter.
Enjoyable & Nutritious
Dairy foods are popular and enjoyed by most—more than 90% of consumers enjoy dairy foods at least several times a week. And dairy foods are popular among children, too, with more than 90% of parents saying their children enjoy consuming dairy foods, like milk, cheese and yogurt, according to a Dairy MAX-funded survey.
But beyond dairy’s beloved taste, it’s also a nutritious option for children and adults alike. For example, milk—no matter the fat level or flavor—offers 13 essential nutrients, including calcium, protein and a variety of vitamins and minerals essential for growth, development and overall health.
A Local & Sustainable Food Source
Dairy foods like milk, on average, come from a dairy farm family within 100 miles of your location. Including more dairy foods on your menu means including more local foods on your menu. And we know that local food is becoming more important to younger consumers. In fact, Innova Market Insights named local food as a top-10 trend in food and beverage markets for 2024. Further, dairy is a sustainable food, providing 20% of the protein in American diets for only 2% of the U.S. carbon footprint—and dairy farm families are only becoming more sustainable by the year.
