Coupons!

[Maximumterror]

This year instead of paper coupons, we are advertising the haunt and asking for people to bring a non-perishable food item instead. The can food item will act as a coupon for $1 off of admission fri/sat and $2 off on Sundays.
Our hope is that we will be able to collect large quantities of food to benefit the local food bank. Being our holiday (Halloween) is right before Thanksgiving, the food banks are in dire need of supply.

This Idea is a Win/Win

1) The Food banks/poor/homeless will benefit with the increased supply of food.

2)Its a Public Relation (PR) dream story, Imagine the headline in your local paper. "Local Haunt raises xxxxx pounds of food for poor/homeless" You can turn it into multiple stories to be covered by your local news. A pre-story (what you plan to do) A mid Oct Story (hows it going) a final story (how it turned out). All in all it is great PR and will gain your haunt/organization alot of public goodwill and support.

We did this idea many many years ago while doing a free home yard haunt. we had only one newspaper article covering it in the local paper and we raised over 800 pounds of food in 4 hours. Imagine the possibilities if it was advertised and covered by local news outlets during the entire month.

Ill post a follow up thread come November to let everyone know how it turned out.

[MindWerxKMG]

Its a great idea!

Did the same thing last year. Two non-perishable food items got a $2 discount. We collected 3 tons in 15 nights.

[BrettBertolino]

I've heard of haunts doing this before, but what I could never understand is where do you store all of the cans of food? We sell tickets out of a trailer on the street and space is at a premium.

[SteveR]

Store them in a pickup truck

Since you'll most likely have to transport the food to your local food bank, keep a pickup truck or box truck right there. No sense moving the stuff twice; put it directly into the truck. If you expect a lot, perhaps the food bank or another local service organization (Sertoma, Rotary, etc) can supply the truck and driver.

[SpFXChic]

We've worked with our local food bank for many years. We've stored the cans in numerous dry places during our show. You do need to have room to put it, we generally have boxes waiting, then tape them up as they get full and move them to storage at the end of the evening. Our food bank picks them all up at the end of the season. They generally don't mind doing this, as we tend to bring in large amounts for them.

Best of luck...it really does look great for the haunt community and it helps feed a lot of hungry people.