What were the most profitable stalls at your school fete?

[EstoyRobandoSuCasa]

And what wasn't really worth the effort?

Five weeks to go until our summer fete and it's all kicked off (again) at the PTA. Most of the members who were supposed to be organising and running the stalls have walked away from the PTA entirely (sadly, not the two people that I wish would leave, but heigh ho).

A bouncy castle and fairground ride have already been booked and I think the catering is mostly sorted, including a cake stall. And the person in charge of the raffle is staying. So, we just need some games stalls and probably a few stalls selling products.

What would you recommend, bear in mind that the number of volunteers we'll have on the day is likely to be limited due to the Old Guard's talent for pissing them all off. I thought about running away as well, but my kids love the fete and the school needs the money.

I’m in Ireland….it is not a thing here, and I’m glad!! 😅

Mocktail stall, create some with names that have meaning to the school or area. DS ran a stall like this, it’s a few years ago they made about £300. It was easily the best fund raising stall.

Bowl out the Teacher at cricket.

Nerf gun target practice.

We did a bottle tombola and a 'fun and games' tombola with prizes for both being brought in by a dress down day (yR-y2 fun and games, y3-y6 bottles). Supplement with cheaper items bought from funds or by arrangement with specific PTA members bulk buying as their donation (eg bubbles work for both)

Cakes, sensibly priced to make sure the people who provide them think it was worth the effort.

A pre-loved uniform stall is helpful.

(Not a fan of external providers myself as it is money lost to PTA, but I do see why people have them.)

Smaller games keep the families there longer so they go back to the big earners. Things like Name the Teddy (choice of 40), Treasure map (which square has the X), Number of sweets in jar, pick a lollipop (coloured ends get a small prize). These can be run by y6 with 1 adult supervising.

At our school the bar and the bbq take the most money. However, one of the big profit stalls is ‘throw a wet sponge at a teacher’. Easy to set up at very little cost and people queuing up to spend money!

Get the people to write what 3 prizes they’d like on the back of their raffle ticket. So when their ticket is drawn they get something they actually want.
DS got a unicycle that way…

Rent a T-shirt printer and offer an unofficial class design? A £2 t-shirt from Decathlon could be sold for £10.

We had a chocolate tomboy. If I recall, we had a non uniform day, and you brought in chocolate as the ‘payment’.

Badge making - we purchased a badge making machine, and charged to make badges.very popular.

face painting.

icecream van - they pay you to be there, and/ or get a percentage of the profits.

Probably the biggest income was the raffle, though, and we’d purchase something decent for the prize,

I don't personally recommend a chocolate tombola in the summer (we had one at Christmas), due to heat and melting.

Throw a wet sponge at a teacher (if you have any at are game). Oddly, the more popular the teacher, the more children want to soak them.

Anything involving a teacher was always popular at ours. The PE teachers doing beat the goalie/ bowl out the batsman. And the Head always used to be the one to have the wet sponges thrown at him - he used to be put in Stocks for it, no idea where we got those from.
And the Burger Bar (cooked by two specific teachers) always had an enormous queue of mums at it - though you may specifically need a Mr Ware and a Mr Robinson for this to work 🤣.
Agree always offer Mufti in return for any donations, works better than just asking for them to be brought in.

Bottle tombola, teddy tombola, jars decorated and filled with sweets/little toys etc.

Not the most money generating overall but one of the most profitable was the plant sale but it obviously depends on the quality of the donations of plants

Bottle tombola. Sweet stall. Football goal ‘beat the PE teacher’ type activities.

If primary,we had a Preloved teddy tombola. £1 a ticket with a prize every time. Loads of people happy to donate unwanted cuddly toys and lots of very happy kids.

Me too!

Also the bar. Normally it's a variety of beer, wine and cocktails, along with soft drinks. They do quite well.out of kids cocktails too- things like cranberry mixed with orange juice.

BBQ always does well - especially as you can prefer in advance when you get your tickets. Tombola always has a huge queue, as do the food trucks (they pay to be there- they have 6 or 7 plus the ice cream van). Candy floss/popcorn stall normally has brisk traffic, and is low cost of someone already has a machine. Tea cups ride (again, charged to be there), face painting and hair braiding.

The fire brigade's prescence always brings in the little ones, as they usually bring a fire engine. The police sometimes do similar.

Always a huge turnout as the PTA do a fabulous job to accommodate both adults and children and it's very well run.

Tombola always raises £300 ish

Face painting if you can rope in some older kids to do it, same with hair braiding.

Cake stall always sells out.

Ice cream always v popular (we use a cool box with supermarkets ice creams, works well)

Second hand books / clothes / bric a brac is always a pain as you have to store it all, set it out and then find a way to deal with what’s leftover.

Oh, and use the older kids to ‘volunteer’ as much as you can. They can organise the fun run, run the lucky dip (always super popular with the kids), really they can run most stalls, sell raffle tickets etc. If the kids are volunteering the whole family usually comes and your adult volunteers can do the more complicated bits.

Colour stalls - basically tombola where you win every time - prizes were all one colour, or wrapped in that colour. It was really useful because we would get a lot of donations of random stuff people wanted to get rid of, so for example the red stall could be anything - a packet of Skittles, a tin of Coke, a red toy of some kind or a household object. The kids loved it because they always won something, and it was also popular with volunteers to staff it because the colour stalls always sold out first, so it left them free to enjoy the rest of the fair.

Tombola. Kids bring in something for the stall and get some donations from shops. We found chain stores were really generous.

Secondhand school uniform should be an absolute given at every fate as part of the sustainability commitment

I don't know but the chocolate tombola was always gone very fast!

Our tombola was the most profitable this year. We had 2, one was a bottle tombola and another for everything else. It was emptied in under an hour!

Splat the teacher - kids pay £1 for 3 wet sponges to throw at a teacher. (No adults allowed!)
Hot dogs - £1 each, have hot dogs kept warm in a slow cooker, ask local supermarket to donate bread rolls, cook up some onions in advance. Costs about 20p per hot dog so 80p profit per sale.
Bottle / chocolate tombolas - school has non uniform days in exchange for a bottle / chocolate donation. Always makes a fortune! Outlay cost zero.

Human fruit machine was always popular.
Our Year Sixes always designed their own games and then ran the stalls.
stocks and wet sponges.
coconut shy.
Sweet stall- bags of pick and mix
Invite local ice cream seller and get them to pay for stall
Displays by children helps to draw parents in.
Running it from around 2.30 on a school day helped.

Golden bucket while not most profitable its easy and can be run with another stall.

You pay £1 to drop your name in the golden bucket and at the end a name is drawn they win half the bucket total the other half goes to the school