In an effort to grow dairy sales in the Southeast, SUDIA is targeting major

chain restaurants with a new way to share menu ideas and advice.

SUDIA hosted the Chain Leader Advi-sory Council (CLAC) inaugural meeting at Atlanta’s Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School in June. The council meeting was a part of a grant from United Dairymen of Idaho to increase the region’s cheese consumption.

The council seeks to inform and get input from restaurant menu develop-ment professionals about the importance of dairy on restaurant menus. The June meeting focused on cheese, but future meetings will cover other items such as lattes, parfaits, smoothies and desserts.

SUDIA invited representatives from more than 75 restaurant chains based in the Southeast, including professionals in charge of menu development, research and development, marketing and execu-tive leadership. The restaurant profes-sionals who attended represented more than 4,300 locations and nearly $1.5 billion in annual sales.

New Council Shares Advice, Promotes Dairy to Restaurants Headquartered in SoutheastCHAIN LEADER ADVISORY COUNCIL

Dairy farm familiesof the Southeast

Dairy Promotion News

September 2014

One of your dairy checkoff pro-gram’s key strategies is to edu-

cate children on the importance of dairy’s nutrition and provide them with a variety of dairy products to enjoy in school. SUDIA continues to offer new school-related programs and partnerships and enhance exist-ing ones.

In conjunction with the National Football League, SUDIA is working with more than 2,000 Southeast schools to prepare for the fall breakfast challenge. All four regional teams – Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, New Orleans Saints and Tennessee Titans – are partici-pating to help increase the number of students who eat school breakfast, which offers an excellent opportunity to grow milk sales now and develop lifelong milk drinkers.

Keeping Dairy Front and Center in Schools

BOARD UPDATEContinued on Page 4

Some days I feel like I need to pile up on my head all the different caps I wear as a dairy farmer: milker, nutrition-

ist, doctor, machinist… the list goes on and on.But one of the caps I like to wear the most

is my promotion cap with the logo: Dedi-cated to Dairy – My Cows, My Milk and My Land.

I believe in promoting our product, especial-ly to “city folk” who have no idea where their milk comes from. Farming 70 miles north-east of the 4.3 million people who live in the metro Atlanta area, I get a lot of opportunities to talk to the public about our products and the way I run my farm.

I am also privileged to represent SUDIA on the national promotion board, the United Dairy Industry Association. There I sit on the Industry Image and Relations

SCHOOLSContinued on Page 2

“We are focusing

on building trust in our products by telling sto-ries about our farms

and our dedication to our way

of life.”

Building the Public’s Trust in Our ProductsBOARD MEMBER UPDATE

COUNCILContinued on Page 3

When ordering materials, please

allow 2 weeks for delivery.

Southeast United Dairy Industry Association, Inc.5340 West Fayetteville RoadAtlanta, GA 30349-5416

CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED

www.southeastdairy.org

www.facebook.com/sedairy

www.twitter.com/sedairy

www.youtube.com/southeastdairyinc

Visit Us ONLINE.

Jerry TrueloveSUDIA Board Secretary

and National UDIA Director

Committee, where other farmers and I approve programs to best commu-nicate our story to the public.

Here are some facts we recently learned about our cus-tomers today:

• They don’t trust industry or the government. They most trust people like themselves: friends and family members.

• They are convinced more by emotion than by facts.

• They want to feel connected to orga-nizations that are doing good in the world.

That’s why we’ve creat-ed a bigger “Consumer Confidence” campaign. It’s designed to educate those consumers who like dairy products but may have questions about dairy’s safety and nutrition. We are focusing on building trust in our products by telling stories

about our farms and our dedica-tion to our way of life. And we’re also telling them about all the good we do in the world: feeding and nourishing the world with nature’s most perfect food.

We’ve put together an army of advocates – from farmers and their family members, our health professional supporters, our partner companies, processors and many others – to focus on specific mes-sages at specific times, to create a louder voice. We not only want to share our story with the public, but we also want to over-come the “badvocates,” those who want to put us out of business.

But we need more voices. I invite you to

join the network and tell your story to the millions of our customers we want to feel good about buying our product. Contact me at SUDIA jtruelove@sedairy.org to join the ranks of farmers who are dedicated to dairy!

Board UpdateContinued from Page 1

Chef Darcey Chambers, chef instructor at Le Cordon Bleu, talks about the school before giving a tour to council attendees.

Chefs, cheese company representa-tives, dietitians and other industry experts participated in the council to share ideas and advice with the res-taurant menu creators.

Senior Research Fellow Ram Kumar

of Glanbia Foods talked about the Cheese Innovation Center in Twin Falls, Idaho, which opened in 2013.

DAIRY Promotion News

SUDIA Board Approves Revised 2014 Budget

The center enables experts to work with customers to turn new cheese ideas into reality. He discussed molecular developments and other innovations shaping the future of cheese pro-duction.

Bill Graves, senior vice president for product research for Dairy Man-agement, Inc.’s Dairy Research Institute, discussed cheese trends in restau-rants, includ-ing matching cheeses to ethnic-in-spired menu items. For example, restaurants might add feta cheese to a Moroc-can pizza or Manchego cheese to a Latin-style burger.

He also shared information about the Cheese and Sodium Best Prac-tices Task Force, which is proactive-

SUDIA’s Board of Directors re-cently approved a revised $11.9 mil-lion annual budget during its August board meeting at Point Clear, Ala.

The board meets each summer to review the budget and make adjust-ments based on economic changes, production levels, and actual year-to-date program expenses.

The revisions to the 2014 bud-get were minor and reflected a decrease of only $4,700 from the original budget. Adjustments in income were due to an increase in in-area income, a decrease in out-of-area income, and an increase in a grant from the Tennessee Dairy Promotion Committee.

The program areas with a mid-year budget increase include School Health and Wellness, Strategic Ini-tiatives, Consumer Confidence/Dairy Image, and Industry Relations.

For more information about SUDIA’s annual program budget or the 2014 budget revisions, please contact Cheryl Hayn at chayn@sedairy.org or 1-800-343-4693.

SchoolsContinued from Page 1

Prizes include money to help improve healthy eating and physical activity in the schools and a team rally.

SUDIA provided promotion kits to help the schools market the challenge, which included items such as customized posters, cafeteria flag pennants to promote drinking milk and eating school breakfast and custom-ized pencils to encourage students to drink milk with breakfast.

The Yo to Go program continues to promote smoothies and yogurt as healthy choices in schools, helping nearly 100 new schools enhance their yogurt offerings by funding items such as smoothie blenders and glass-front refrigerators for display-ing yogurt parfaits. New this year is a collaboration with the USDA’s School Lunch Program to offer Greek yogurt in schools, encouraging students who might not choose traditional yogurt to try the Greek option.

The USDA offers the program in 12 states, including Tennessee, who had

90 schools participate in the pilot last year, as well as North Carolina and Mississippi.

CouncilContinued from Page 1

ly working to develop rapid formu-lations for lower-sodium cheese, identify a fast method for sodium testing and provide education about the sodium content of dairy prod-ucts, dispelling myths and promot-ing the health benefits of cheese.

Cathy Holley, editor-in-chief and publisher of Flavor in the Menu magazine, also discussed trends, providing additional examples of interesting dishes some restau-rants use to showcase cheese on their menus.

SUDIA dietitian Lanier Dabruzzi shared information on cheese nu-trition and how it relates to healthy menus.

“The CLAC meeting allowed us to bring together restaurant chains to keep dairy on their radar,” said Mark Farmer, SUDIA’s assistant director of marketing and part-ner relations. “We want dairy to be considered an essential part of their menus that can bring them success with taste, texture and protein in their dishes.”

Farmer said the restaurants par-ticipated because they realize how important dairy is to their menus and were actively interested in learning more about incorporating dairy. Restaurant representatives

provided helpful feedback about what information they need to know to expand their dairy offerings.

“We plan to use the CLAC as an opportunity to focus on discussing dairy as a whole, including options such as milkshakes and smoothies, in collaboration with the restau-rants,” said Farmer. “As the council grows, we can provide more infor-mation about what they’re interest-ed in, such as dairy trends across the country and innovations in dairy on other restaurant menus.”

Since the session, Atlanta-based Arby’s has begun meeting with SU-DIA representatives to discuss how to make cheese more prominent on their menu.

The council plans to meet annually.

Warren Katz, imported cheese sales manager for Lactalis Culinary, shares ideas with other council members.

Tell Your StoryCommunity Outreach

Trainings

Sharing your story and pas-sion for dairy with your com-munity is a great way to build consumer confidence in dairy foods. SUDIA offers free Com-munity Outreach trainings, which include tips on public speaking and tools on how to share your dairy story.

Please call if you’re inter-ested in reaching out to your community or attending a program.

For more information, contact Rebecca Egsieker at regsieker@sedairy.org or 770-994-5832.

SUDIA supports the program by offering Yo to Go Greek materials, including sending participating schools in the Southeast a promo-tion kit that includes items such as posters, clings and shelf danglers.

To schools that received smoothie blenders, SUDIA sent promotion kits for the Smooth and Smart program. The kits include items such as eye-catching hot pink aprons for school nutrition staff,

banners, posters, stickers and shaker cups.

SUDIA also is working with high schools with coffee bars to offer smoothies.

Now in 614 schools, SUDIA finds in-novative ways to market the Coolers for Coaches program. The program reaches out to secondary school coaches to promote chocolate milk as a recovery drink for student athletes. SUDIA provides a free glass-front cooler for the coaches to place in the fieldhouse or other athletic facility and to stock with chocolate milk.

After its national launch in April, the Great American Milk Drive has caught on in SUDIA region.

The program, which SUDIA pro-motes in conjunction with MilkPEP, the milk processors checkoff pro-gram, focuses on closing the gap be-tween the demand for milk in food banks and its availability.

Milk is the most requested food at food banks, but 95 percent of food banks lack enough milk donations to meet the demand.

The Great American Milk Drive makes donating easy, enabling people to give as little as $5 online or through text messaging to supply milk to local families. This results in increased milk sales as dona-tions help milk reach families who wouldn’t normally be able to buy it.

Processors and food banks have al-ready caught the donation bug in Ten-nessee and Mississippi with events that have garnered 1,450 gallons of milk donated to local food banks.

SUDIA staff and dairy farmer Ran-dy Davis joined Mayfield Dairies and Second Harvest of East Tennessee at a Kroger store in Knoxville, Tenn., on June 28th and received 550 gal-lons of milk. On that same day in Nashville, Tenn., SUDIA staff and dairy farmer Rabon Bayless joined Purity Dairies and Second Harvest of Middle Tennessee at a Kroger store

Milk Drive Fills Food Pantries Across SoutheastHow is your

state doing in milk

donations?*

*Number of donations represents only those made through the online system. It does not include donations made via texting or at a GAMD event.

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

Ken

tuck

y: 3

50 g

allo

ns

Ala

bam

a: 3

72 g

allo

ns

Loui

sian

a: 4

19 g

allo

ns

S. C

arol

ina:

519

gal

lons

Geo

rgia

: 757

gal

lons

Ten

ness

ee:

1,4

67 g

allo

ns

N. C

arol

ina:

1,

634

gallo

ns

Vir

gian

ia:

2,2

55 g

allo

ns

Mis

siss

ippi

: 120

gal

lons

and received 400 gallons of milk. On June 30, SUDIA, Prarie Farms

and the Mississippi Food Network announced Prairie Farms’ donation of 500 gallons of milk to the drive.

SUDIA will continue this trend by hosting two large events in Georgia and North Carolina in September to celebrate Hunger Action Month. SU-DIA, along with MilkPEP and May-field, also spread the word about the Great American Milk Drive at the Yellow Daisy Festival on September 6 in Atlanta, Ga.

“We want dairy to be considered

an essential part of their menus that can bring

them success with taste, texture and

protein.”