September 2011 Highlights « Back

Fuel Up to Play 60 in South Dakota

The South Dakota Dietetic Association annual conference in Rapid City includes a presentation by your registered dietitian, Dawn Conrad.  She is requesting support for Fuel Up to Play 60 and discussing ways to activate the program in each dietitian’s school and community.  

Plans are under way for a Fuel Up to Play 60 “end of the football season” event at both South Dakota State and the University of South Dakota, involving their athletic departments and Kids Clubs.  There has been interest in making chocolate milk available to all of their athletes, so we are discussing that with area milk suppliers. 

Other South Dakota Updates

Chocolate milk is promoted as a sports refueling drink by Midwest Dairy Association on a regular basis, and we have spread that message previously to 2,500 runners at the Sioux Falls Sanford Marathon.  This weekend we’ll promote chocolate milk at the Run Crazy Horse Marathon at Hill City.  We are finding 80 percent of the runners typically come over and use chocolate milk to assist in rehydrating their bodies after these running events, and we receive many positive comments.

All the fairs are now behind us. We had great visibility with new messaging at the Sioux Empire and South Dakota State Fairs.  The weather was so great, with attendance up about 20 percent, causing us to run out of shake mix at 5 p.m. on Sunday, September 4, at the State Fair.  That left us short for the final days but still resulted in record sales and revenue. These funds will allow dairy messaging to go further by educating consumers of healthy dairy nutrition and enhancing dairy image.

Dairy Princess Natalie Thyen was kept busy at the State Fair with events going on every day, where she told the dairy industry story to consumers. Natalie participated in rolling out new promotional material at the Wine Pavilion, showcasing one of the South Dakota made cheeses.

South Dakota hosted our Midwest Dairy September Corporate Board meeting last week at the SDSU Dairy Plant Research facility. We were able to highlight the South Dakota dairy industry as well as show where some of the checkoff funds have been applied for research.