By Tija Hunter, CDA, EFDA
For the past seven years in a row, our office has done a “Halloween Candy Buy Back.” We take the five working days right after Halloween and buy the candy back from the kids at $1 per pound!
This is nothing new – but so much fun! So if your office isn’t doing something like this, you should consider it. Our patients love it and the local schools do too! And let’s not forget what a great marketing tool it is.
Read more about the Halloween Candy Buy Back
We pass out flyers the entire month of October, change our answering machine to let callers know, and call the local elementary schools. They will usually put it in their newsletter or create a flyer to send home with the students. The different classes are even doing it as a contest to see who can come up with the most candy. The class that wins buys something for the classroom with the money earned.
Our local Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts get in on the fun too! They use it as a fundraiser for their projects.
We keep a scale in the office to be ready for kids. You should see their little faces when you hand them $5 – they get so excited! And the parents love getting all the candy out of the house.
What do we do with all this candy you ask? We donate it to the local United Service Organization (USO) at Lambert International Airport. These USOs survive on donations and the servicemen and women love having a treat when they pass through. Other great places to donate are some of the organizations that send care packages overseas.
We usually collect a couple hundred pounds! Each year it gets bigger and bigger. The local paper comes out to take pictures, usually with a scouting troop. We dump all the candy on the floor and let the kids sit around it. Sometimes we bury the kids up to their heads! Our name gets out to every elementary student and parents tell other parents. It’s marketing, it’s giving back to the community, and it’s so much fun!
If you’re looking for creative ways to market your practice, consider the fun of a Halloween Candy Buy Back!
