As part of its ongoing efforts to promote and enhance the Kids LiveWell program, the National Restaurant Association today announced a new partnership with Kidzsmart Concepts, a creative marketing and communications company dedicated to engaging children and families with multi-platform educational resources.
“Kidzsmart provides valuable customer engagement tools to the restaurant industry, and we are excited to leverage their ideas to help restaurants promote their healthful Kids LiveWell menu items and enhance the dining experience for their customers,” said Scott DeFife, Executive Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs for the National Restaurant Association.
Working in collaboration with the Association, Kidzsmart has developed a three-part program of child-focused activities for restaurants that have joined the Association’s Kids LiveWell program, a first-of-its-kind initiative that helps restaurants highlight their healthful menu choices for children.
The activities will allow restaurants to put “the power to be awesome” right into the hands of kids across the country. The program asks kids to take a “pledge of awesomeness,” and commit themselves to being health aware, delivered through a highly engaging, customizable series of “Super Awesome” placemats, with optional collectible Power icon tattoos, which recognize and reward kids for aiming to be their best. A Super Awesome training and goal setting manual follows in phase two, and to celebrate their ongoing commitment, the final phase is a digital app where kids create themselves as their own Super Awesome Avatar. There is complete flexibility for all operators to have their respective branding and design elements built in across each phase, with links to each individual brand’s website.
“Our strategy is to ‘hero the kids’; to give them the power to make good decisions, and provide recognition for those decisions that encourage an active, healthy life,” said Ian Macdonald, VP Marketing at Kidzsmart. “At the same time, the program also has to hero the individual participating brand, which the kids already love. We want to reinforce that relationship in the context of the newer, more healthful meals each partner offers.”
To join Kids LiveWell, restaurants agree to offer and promote a selection of items that meet qualifying criteria based on leading health organizations’ scientific recommendations, including the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines. The initiative focuses on increasing consumption of fruit and vegetables, lean protein, whole grains and low-fat dairy, and limiting fats, sugars and sodium.
Kids LiveWell was developed in collaboration with Healthy Dining, whose team of registered dietitians works with restaurants to identify and validate the qualifying Kids LiveWell menu choices. Participating restaurant companies promote the menu items, and the items can also be found at HealthyDiningFinder.com. For more information on the program and participating restaurants, visit restaurant.org/kidslivewell or HealthyDiningFinder.com.
Kidzsmart Concepts Inc. is an international kids & family marketing group who help brands create profitable relationships with families. Services include character development, interactive narratives across multiple platforms, and family loyalty concepts for restaurant chains in the US, Canada and the UK. www.kidzsmart.com
Founded in 1919, the National Restaurant Association is the leading business association for the restaurant industry, which comprises 960,000 restaurant and foodservice outlets and a workforce of nearly 13 million employees. Together with the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, the Association works to lead America’s restaurant industry into a new era of prosperity, prominence, and participation, enhancing the quality of life for all we serve. For more information, visit our Web site at www.restaurant.org.
