Frozen Food is the way to go!

Several "external influences" have greatly affected product
fundraising in the last year. One is the large number of families
that have refinanced homes, cashing out equity, only to find their
property value in decline and that they are "upside down" in their
equity to debt ratio. The second is the ever-increasing credit card
debt of families, and the third is the high price of gasoline and
diesel fuel, which has pushed prices of all consumer products to
higher and higher levels. All three of these factors have reduced
the available "discretionary spending" money, resulting in a decline
in fundraising sales of historically strong items like wrapping paper
and shopper catalogs. The exception to this is the frozen food
category, because people perceive it as "groceries" and buy it from
their grocery budgets. In general programs with cookie dough,
desserts, and some sort of "main course" such as microwaveable pizza
seem to do the best. In some instances, combining a non-food
product, such as flags, flower bulbs, or wrapping paper, with frozen
food gives an even better result, but this tends to vary with the
local economy. We are seeing increases in our groups selling our
Food Court brochure, at a time when the entire industry is
complaining about declining sales. Some organizations hesitate to
try frozen foods because they think that people won't pick up their
products on pick-up day. We have found that this is almost never a
problem if the project sponsor follows our project management plan.