PTA ice lolly sale - Keeping your cool 😎
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Frozen Friday or Cool after School - whatever you call your ice lolly sale event, it is an easy fundraising win in terms of income verses time, effort and volunteers. The best places to buy in bulk from are Iceland, Aldi or Lidl, Bookers or Costco. A PTA should be able to charge between 30p and 50p per lolly depending on demographic and of course, weather!
The biggest challenge is keeping your cold treats frozen for as long as possible. You need to sell as many as you can without sacrificing a volunteer to rush off to buy more and miss out on any sales. We’ve compiled a few tips to help with this.
1) Choosing your icebox.
Not all ice-boxes are equal. It is worth the investment to get one with good insulation. It’s also important to consider how functional the size will be when it’s jam-packed with lollies and drinks. It might be better to have two smaller boxes, that are easy to lift, rather than a single, large,unmanageable one. Check out this article by the BBC.
2) Prepare your icebox in advance.
Use block ice to do this. Cooling the icebox in advance means that any ice you put in later stays solid for longer! You can buy ice bricks, but it’s free and more ECO friendly to make your own using old ice cream cartons or single use plastic drinks bottles. Don’t forget to only part-fill them with water before freezing to allow for expansion.
3) Add some salt to your ice.
Adding salt to the water before freezing lowers the freezing temperature of the water, meaning that your ice will actually be colder than frozen fresh water. Using seawater will work even better if your lucky enough to live near a beach!
4) Keep it out of the sun.
Keep your icebox in the shade as much as possible, ensuring a good airflow around the box. Covering your icebox with a wet blanket or towel will help protect it from the sun.
5) Avoid opening your icebox too much
This is obvious, but every time you open your icebox, you let the hot air in and cold air out. Avoid opening your icebox too much, and do so gently. Consider moving a selection of lollies to a smaller icebox or cooler bag to get you through high peaks of sales. That way, you’re only having to open the main icebox once and don’t have to leave it open for the 20 minutes of crazy sales when school first breaks up.
6) Fill your icebox as much as you can
An icebox packed to the brim will preserve its cold temperature longer than a part-filled icebox. The more lollies or drinks you have in your icebox, the less air there is needing to be cooled down and kept cold.
We hope these tips are useful and save you from any meltdowns on the day!
If you are selling ice-lollies at any event that needs online ticketing, check out our special deals specifically for PTA groups here.
