Food for Thought: Promotions with YUM Appeal

Ideas for Promotional Food Items

What’s your favorite treat? Is it fresh, out of the oven chocolate chip cookies like your grandma used to bake? Or do you like something salty, maybe movie popcorn with a little extra butter and salt? Did you start to smile when you thought of your favorite delectable delight? I sure did – and for me it’s peanut clusters – chocolatey and salty.

You can capture those good feelings and wrap them around your brand to create a positive experience for your employees, existing loyal customers, and your potential future customers. Promotional food giveaways are poised to become the next big marketing trend, and rushIMPRINT will help you make the most of it. The main reason this marketing trend is so successful is that food already has an emotional element that’s built-in, you don’t have to create it, you simply get to make the most of it and enjoy the benefits.

Why Use Edible Promotions

We just briefly touched on the why, but using edible promotional marketing is a smart way to connect with your current and future brand loyalists, here’s why:

Food gives comfort

A study in 2020 found that during quarantine people were turning to childhood food favorites in droves for comfort. Experts suggest that comfort eating will continue post-pandemic.

Foodies on the rise

You don’t have to be on the cutting edge of gastronomy to be trendy, today’s foodie is all about the experience and social engagement. This momentum is easy to ride with promotional food gifts.

Appreciation is high

While some other promotional items are opened and then discarded or put away and forgotten, food is overwhelmingly appreciated and eaten.

Repeats are welcome

Clothing and office supply giveaways are fantastic, but you can only give someone so many t-shirts before they burn out. Now food on the other hand is a different story. They’ll begin to crave and anxiously await your next tasty promotion.

Options for Promotional Food Giveaways

If you’re seeing the light and realizing that yummy promotions are the way to go, here are some of the rushIMPRINT top sellers.

Chocolate chip cookies

There’s a reason the chocolate chip cookie is a favorite for so many, they’re delicious, homey, and familiar. A box of chocolate chip cookies is a welcome gift and cookies are back in style now, surpassing the cupcake trend.

S’Mores Kits

The s’mores kit plays directly into the comfort food and nostalgia categories. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the buzz around this promotional food giveaway began during 2020 quarantine and is only picking up steam with our customers.

Custom chocolate

There are a couple ways to go with these, you can have your brand imprinted on the chocolate itself or on the packaging, or both! Custom chocolate giveaways are a great return on investment because they’re so loved and can be very inexpensive.

Food baskets, towers, and boxes

The gift box trend is exploding and you’re probably seeing more subscription box ads in your social media. This is a good thing because you can get in on this craze and pair it with a food giveaway. We have a huge variety of food baskets, towers, and boxes that you can select to give to your customers and future brand ambassadors.

Health and wellness

While decadence is definitely appealing, there is a strong demand for healthy food options and some brands simply work better with health and wellness snacks than they do with treats. Keeping your brand identity intact is important and you can do that while still doling out food promotions.

Foodless promotions

It’s still possible to be involved in yummy promotions without actually giving away edible items. Custom drinkware is a great way to tap into this arena while giving your customers a durable good that they will use repeatedly. Cutting boards and charcuterie trays are also a huge trend (more on this later) that you might want to make the most of right now while it’s picking up steam.

Beyond The Gift of Food

One of my favorite aspects of some food gifts is that there is potential to go beyond the gift itself and entire marketing campaigns can evolve. At rushIMPRINT, we’ve come up with a few wonderful ways to turn edible marketing into larger promotional food events.

Charcuterie contest

Charcuterie boards and displays are replacing paint and sip or wine and design activities so this is a great time to get ahead of the trend and create a social media charcuterie contest – using your branded board giveaways of course.

Virtual themed events

Host a virtual event with your customers that includes their food gift. Consider a story time with hot chocolate bombs or s’mores kits, taco Tuesday where they supply the taco and you supply a mailed Margarita Kit, or host a fitness event with energy drinks.

Trek and trails

Encourage your customers to enjoy the great outdoors by stocking them up with trail snacks and water bottles and sending them outdoors. Celebrate pictures shared on your social media accounts, give them prompts of items to find, award prizes for the most parks visited, etc. Any way you can get people active and excited about an event you’re promoting can help you win new customers and develop stronger bonds with your current fans.

Cooking class

Virtual cooking and cocktail classes have seen a big uptick in recent years, hosting one and inviting your mailing list can be a fun way to be interactive and engaged. Giving them some of the tools and/or supplies they’ll need makes the event more fun and will serve as a lasting reminder of your brand each time they reach for that item.

Recipe book and more

Go old school on this one and create a classic “community” cookbook. These were often done in small towns, churches, and schools. People would submit a recipe and a little information on that recipe, and then all the recipes were collected and compiled into a cookbook. You can do this with your staff, or you can open it up to your customers who want to be included. The final book is a wonderful gift and a constant reminder of your company.

If you’re feeling a little hungry for a new marketing idea, give one of these edible promotions a try. Just pop over to the rushIMPRINT website and connect with me or another one of our customer service agents on a live chat or give us a call at 1 (866) 277-RUSH (7874) and we’ll get your order started or help you pick out some delicious treats.