Choosing a Location

• Often, if you’re organizing a bake sale for an organization, you may want to have the bake sale at the organization’s property. But the key is traffic. The more people that walk by your bake sale, the more chances you’ll have to sell those delicious baked goodies! So if you can have your bake sale at the mall, or somewhere else a lot of people walk, have it there.

Choosing a Date

• Try to choose a date that doesn’t conflict with any other major events in your city. You don’t want to have people making a choice between your bake sale and another event.
  
  
• However, if you can schedule you bake sale to coincide with another event, and find a location that is very close or involved with that event, you can get some of the people going to the other event to come to your bake sale.

Choosing a Theme

• A theme isn’t a necessary ingredient for a bake sale. But it can make the sale a lot of fun for everyone – organizers, bakers and customers.
  
  
• A Mardi Gras Bake Sale can be lots of fun with traditional baked goods and beads for everyone. St. Patrick’s Day means lots of green frosting and Irish soda bread.
  
  
• Be creative.

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Create a List of Specifics

The main information you want to get across in your promotion/advertising is date, time, location and any unique benefits of your bake sale as well as the name of the organization the bake sale is benefiting. Depending on how much room there is for information in your advertising, you may want to stick with only this information.

Other important information could include a specific fundraising goal you are trying to reach and what the money will be used for.

Post Flyers Ahead of Time

People plan their schedules early. If they know in advance that you’re having a bake sale, you will have a better chance of being included in their scheduled plans!

Create a Marketing Team

There are a lot of people who want your bake sale to succeed. Let them help. Have each person involved in your organization put flyers in all the places they work, shop or relax. Before you know it, the entire area will be informed! Public bulletin boards are an easy way to spread the word. Look for these bulletin boards at local libraries, schools, coffee shops, etc.

Advertise Pre-Orders

If you have the ability to fill advance orders, add the service to your advertising message. That way people can be sure they get what they want and you’ll be sure to have a sale. You can have them pick up their goodies the day of the sale or offer delivery, an amenity very popular with local business.

Create News Releases
Click here for a template example.

A bake sale may not make the front page of the newspaper, but you might get your event mentioned in a variety of other sections. Write a news release containing the basic information of your bake sale. Try not to add any personal feelings about the event.

Send your news release to everyone! Send it to all the local papers, including papers in neighboring towns. Send it to radio and television stations. They often have local event calendars. And be sure to inform local churches who may want to include it in their bulletins. If your community and local organizations have a website, make sure to send your news release to the webmaster that manages each web site.

Email

Recipe Cards

Print out recipe cards and incoprate with your bake sale display. Customers will enjoy the opportunity to try a new baked good and then create it on their own.

• HELPFUL HINT: All NESTLE TOLL HOUSE recipes on VeryBestBaking.com can be printed onto recipe cards (index card size). On each recipe page, select 'print recipe card' from the left-side recipe tools.

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Bake Favorites and Novelties

• Variety is important to a bake sale. Allow bakers to volunteer for specific baked goods they’d like to make. If you notice your bake sale will already have enough of those items, ask if he or she would like to bake something else. Our Bake Sale recipes are a great resource for finding and suggesting traditional and new types of recipes for friends to create and donate.
  
  
  • HELPFUL HINT: For those who enjoy cutting corners but like to be creative,  NESTLÉ TOLL HOUSE refrigerated cookie and brownie dough recipes are a great way to save time but delivers beautiful results.
    
    
• We have created a ‘Bake Sale Donation Tracker’, a downloadable form to help you keep track of who is donating what type of baked good.
  
  
  • HELPFUL HINT: Oftentimes, friends want to help but they are too busy to bake from scratch. NESTLÉ TOLL HOUSE refrigerated cookie and brownie dough is a quick and easy way to make freshly baked (just like homemade) treats.  
      
• Do you have any exceptional presentation bakers volunteering? Have your best baking artist create a masterpiece you can raffle or auction to the highest bidder.
  
  
• Make sure you have a wide variety of prices – from inexpensive to expensive – so that customers can spend what they want to spend.
  
  
• Jar kits make excellent bake sale items. The customer can either give them as gifts or use them as a convenient way to make homemade treats. Click here for some jar kit recipes.

Make Ingredients List

• There are many foods that people may be allergic. Create an ingredient list on labels so customers can buy your banana pie and not worry if it contains peanuts, for example.
  
  
  • HELPFUL HINT: All of the NESTLÉ TOLL HOUSE Bake Sale recipes conveniently contain ingredient cards for you to print and insert with each baked good being sold.
    
    
• Add a thank you note to each package that includes what the purchase benefits as well as your organization’s contact information. You never who might want to donate in the future!

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Here is a quick list of some things you may need at your bake sale:

• Change - Imagine that quite a few people will have come directly from the ATM and may only have a $20. They’ll need change.
  
  
• Masking Tape and Duct Tape - Most unexpected problems can be fixed with a little tape.
  
  
• Cooler - You’ll be wishing for a warm, sunny day to boost sales. But cheesecakes, fudge and other items don’t do well in the heat.
  
  
• Napkins and Plastic Forks - Your baked goods will look so delicious, customers won’t want to wait until they get home to indulge.
  
  
• Serving Utensils - Bring a knife, spatula and any other implements you need to keep the goodies looking good.
  
  
• Plates and Bags - Have enough plates and bags of various sizes so that all the items in your sale can be taken home and kept fresh.
  
  
• Tablecloths and Decorations – The more appealing the presentation, the more tempting the goodies will be.
  
  
• Tray with Doilies – Offering samples is an easy way to boost sales.

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