The machine was installed Friday, Sept. 17, and will be there for two months as part of a national packing and marketing campaign mounted by “A Bunch of Carrot Farmers,” a group led by Bolthouse Farms in Bakersfield, Calif.
The veggie vending marked the launch of the first-ever marketing campaign for baby carrots, which is getting its start in the Greater Cincinnati area and in Syracuse, N.Y., the two national test markets. In addition to Mason, the company also is testing a vending machine at a school in Syracuse, N.Y.
Bolthouse Farms provided the vending machine and covers its operating costs, and the high school gets to keep the profits from the machine, according to Tracey Carson, the district’s spokeswoman.
The company installed vending machines in the two schools and stocked them with 300 bags of baby carrots at 50 cents a bag.
Reaction was decidedly positive at Mason High, according to George Coates, the school’s assistant principal.
“It hadn’t been an hour after they filled the machines, that we had students coming in and purchasing baby carrots,” Coates said.
Students also are getting educational value out of the machine, not just nutrition, he said.
We have three different groups in an entrepreneurs class that are making their own marketing campaign to see whose campaign works the best and trying to promote sales (of the carrots) within the school,” Coates sad.
School officials are working with Bolthouse Farms to decide on an award for the winning marketing campaign, he said.
There are no other snack food vending machines in the school, Coates said, just ones for beverages. That lack of junk food in the school is part of the district’s “commitment to healthy snacking,” he said.
However, providing baby carrots is nothing new in Mason School District, according to Darlene Hicks, supervisor of food service management. For at least the past eight years, high schools students have bee able to add a half cup – around 3 ounces – of the vegetable as a side dish to their entree at no cost or purchase them separately at the school’s snack shop for 65 cents.
However, having a vending machine available before and after schools hours, even on a temporary basis, is an appreciated alternative to stave off hunger.
“You have to appeal to the students in a manner in which they’re familiar and for whatever reason, vending machines have always held some kind of magic for human beings as a whole,” she said. “If we can get them to eat carrots, we’ll do it any way we can.”
View the “Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food” commercials at www.tinyurl.com/tinycarrots.
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