Indian Fry Bread Mix

I generally do not like doing fundraisers where you are selling a product. There is always a risk of product being lost, not paid for, or extra non-returnable product being left over after the sale. All these things are going to lower your profits. Indian Fry Bread Mix is one of my exceptions.

The Indian Fry Bread Mix that I suggest using comes from Red Corn Native Foods (http://www.redcorn.com/). I have dealt with this company and their product is excellent! With the fry bread mix you can make fry bread, tacos, meat pies, and other things. There are several recipes on their website. The mix is very easy to use – just add water, mix, knead, cut, and fry. The taste is difficult to describe so you really want to try it for yourself..

The fry bread mix comes in 8 ounce, 2 pound, and 5 pound packages. At last check, you could get 16 eight ounce bags of the mix shipped anywhere in the continental United States for $19.50 (about $1.21 a bag). I’ve sold many of these bags for $3 each. In some specialty food stores, the eight ounce bags are sold for $5 or more.

My suggestion for using this as a fundraiser is to first order a two pound bag of it to try out. Make some fry bread for some of your leadership and kids to try. I think it is best served hot so fix it at the church or invite some people over.

After you have decided to sell the bread mix, you will need to set your selling price and make up some order sheets. Find a time after the evening to have a fry bread party at the church. Depending on the size of your church, order some large bags to mix up for the party and several of the eight ounce bags to sell at the party. Serve fresh fry bread to everybody (don’t forget the coffee and tea). As people are eating, give them your sales pitch. Let them know what you are raising money for as well as the bag sizes and prices. Sell the bags that you have available and take orders for the rest. Some of the costs of your sampling party can be covered by putting out a box for donations.

I have sold many eight ounce bags at $3 and two pound bags at $10. If you order the “freight friendly” pages, you will be seeing a profit of $1.79 and $4.78 per bag.

Even though your official fundraiser is over, it is not uncommon for people to want to re-order the mix after they have tried it in their home.

I consider this a rather low risk fundraiser. There are some up-front costs, but these should be fairly easy to recover.