Our Great American Bake Sale

In 2009, just after Cookie Central opened, I stumbled across a promotion for Great American Bake Sale on the side of a bag of Domino Sugar.  It was only a few days later that my husband came home to tell me about Cor Unum, the meal center located next to his warehouse.  People lining up hours before serving time, waiting for something so many of us take for granted - a meal.  It was that moment we decided to take our town by storm and spread the message of No Kid Hungry.

Our first bake sale season we hosted a Great American Bake Sale complete with BBQ, music, magician and raffle.  This was also the year mother nature threw us a huge curve ball...and lots of rain. While our turn out was less (much less) than what we had all hoped for this "event of the town", we still raised more than $1,000 and had enough food left over to make a big difference in Cor Unum's 4th of July serving.  As we saw it, an overall success.

During our second season (2010) we inadvertently stumbled into online marketing.  With the new Team Pages instilled by GABS we were able to pull in 50% of our season's total without baking a cookie!  We also learned to spread our events out, piggy backing them on four town events.  The season brought in more than double that in 2009 - awesome.  Cookie Central's Great American Bake Sale is now a permanent fixture at North Andover's Craft & Sheep Shearing Festival, as well as the town's 4th of July Celebrations. 

As 2011 crept in, we new we wanted to revisit our original idea of a single independent event focused solely on ending childhood hunger in America and introduced Great American Golf Tournament to our schedule.  We began dabbling with new bake sale locations, expanding on the online success we saw in 2010, incorporating local hunger relief organizations and reaching out to other area bake sale participants.  In all, our 3rd GABS season included 9 bake tables (2 of which we volunteered at), 4 online promotions and the golf tournament and again, doubled that which we brought in the previous year.

With 2012 just a few hours old, we turn our thoughts to what great things Cookie Central's 4th Annual Great American Bake Sale will bring and will be updating our blog with our thoughts, plans and scheduled events. 

We encourage anyone reading to join the fight against childhood hunger in America.  Find out how you can host your own Great American Bake Sale at greatamericanbakesale.org, then visit The Bake Sale Neighborhood to share tips, tricks and advice with other bake sale participants across the country.

Thank you for reading! ~ Michele :)