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Some 2013 National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day Higlights

Here are some great examples of celebrating National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day (April 2) in style!

Sprout Watches (photo at left), in Long Island City, New York had an in-house picnic featuring organic peanut butter and jelly, fruit, and more. They also had a peanut butter and/or jelly recipe contest open to all.

In the Jiff vs. Skippy face-off at Two Rivers Bank & Trust, which has branches throughout Iowa, Jiff was the winner by a small margin in both the creamy and crunchy categories. In the favorite jelly contest, strawberry was the winner, but grape did respectably. Two Rivers also made an outstanding custom flier for the event.

In order to accommodate ordering schedules, the University of Houston Dining Services is splitting their National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day activities into two parts. Each part features plant-based food options and peanut butter-based dishes specifically. In part one, the peanut butter-based version of the Monte Cristo sandwich was a big hit.

At the Doolen Middle School in Tucson, Arizona, the 6th through 8th grade students all had PB&J sandwiches and talked about plant-based meal ideas, and two lucky students were the winners in the PB&J Campaign tee shirt raffle.

At the Arlington, Virginia Whole Foods (photo below), PB&J Campaign staff and volunteers handed out a variety of PB&J mini-sandwiches, including some using maple almond butter donated by Jason’s Nut Butters. We handed out lots of brochures and had some “fruitful” conversations about the environmental benefits of PB&Js and other simple plant-based meals. The shoppers really enjoyed the free snack as dinnertime neared.

There are a multitude of fun, productive ways to celebrate National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day…but remember, you can hold PB&J-themed events (preferably with some environmental message) any day of the year, and we look forward to helping you make it a success!

Many thanks to everyone who participated in this year’s National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day!

National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day: One Month Away

Have you made your plans yet for National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, April 2?

Of course, you can always have some . . . (wait for it) . . . PB&J that day! It’s not only for lunch, you know!

PB&J founder Bernard Brown and a volunteer at a National PB&J Day event

An awesome way to celebrate this great holiday is to hold an event, perhaps at your campus food hall, or our workplace, or a busy street corner, or even your front porch. We can help! This recent blog post talks about how you can set up a PB&J Campaign event, and what we can provide.

There is already one very cool event scheduled in New York, by Sprout Watches (more on this later), and we will likely hold at least one in the Washington, DC area. What about you? The West Coast is still wide open. (And if you’re in Canada, The Netherlands, Australia, etc. and want to hold an event, that would be wonderful–no reason why this can’t morph into International Peanut Butter and Jelly Day!)

PB&J is fun. But the underlying message–that we can save resources by choosing simple plant-based meals such as PB&J or Indian lentil dishes or Asian tofu dishes or spaghetti marinara–is serious, if not urgent.

Be prepared. A Well-Fed World founding director Dawn Moncrief and PB&J Campaign director Gary Loewenthal were confused when people wanted to try peanut butter and pickles, but they figured it out.

So at your event, you can attract people with free PB&J mini-sandwiches, and then offer them a PB&J Campaign brochure (which we can send to you) and see where the conversation leads from there. You already know this, but . . . strive to answer any questions with panache and a smile, and there’s nothing wrong with saying “I don’t know” or “Let me get back to you.” (Feel free to contact us for support, also.) People get attached to food habits, but the power of friendly persuasion is also formidable.

Don’t have time to hold an event? Social media is a super-effective way to spread the word and create a buzz. we’ll also have web banners you can download in a few days; watch this space for details.

Let us know what you’re doing or planning for National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, and we’ll help promote it (if you want us to)! We’ll keep you abreast of goings-on on our end. More later!

Getting Involved with the PB&J Campaign in 2013

Do you like PB&J and the environment?

We’re looking for people who want to help spread the good news about PB&J and other simple plant-based meals. if you’d like to do an event or ongoing promotion in your school, workplace, church/temple/mosque, or community, we can set you up with brochures, signage graphics, PB&J Pledge forms, and probably a PB&J Campaign tee shirt (and give you a discount if you want more than one shirt).

Our event toolkit has all this information, plus lots more. We wrote it for anyone who wants to do an event featuring the PB&J Campaign.

Here are some ideas for PB& Campaign promotion:

Many college campuses let students reserve kiosks for tabling displays. Often these are in high-traffic areas such as food halls, so you can get a lot of attention.
People love free food. Consider a PB&J feed-in where you give away mini-PB&J sandwiches. Usually you can set up a small table in publicly accessible areas as long as you do not block car or foot traffic, but please find out the local regulations first.
Is your office trying to “go green?” A PB&J Campaign display in the lobby might be perfect.
Many grocery stores let you do in-store “demos” or product promotions. One selling point for a PB&J Campaign demo is that it may increase sales of peanut butter and other nut butters, as well as jelly, jam, etc.
There are two days in April that are great opportunities for spreading the PB&J Campaign message: Earth Day and National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day (which is on April 2 every year, and we think maybe should be called International Peanut Butter and Jelly Day).

Feel free to combine PB&J Campaign advocacy with related promotions, such as energy efficiency, buying local, Meatless Monday, a vegan cooking class–whatever!

Be as creative as you want to be–we want to hear your awesome ideas and help you with them!

PB&J, unpretentious and inexpensive–”the people’s sandwich”–lends itself well to friendly grassroots advocacy–and that means you. Let us know how we can help you. Contact us at pbj@pbjcampaign.org if you’re interested in getting on board with this.

PB&J Campaign at DC Whole Foods Apple Fest Celebration

This Saturday, October 27, from 11 am to 4 pm, the PB&J Campaign will participating in the Washington, DC P Street Whole Foods Apple Fest. We’ll be serving:

Mini peanut butter and apple slice sandwiches
Mini maple almond butter and apple slice sandwiches
Mini PB&J sandwiches
Apple slices with peanut butter or maple almond butter
Maybe more

We’ll also hand out our PB&J Campaign brochures and let interested people know how they can save resources and reduce their environmental impact with simple plant-based meals such as PB&J sandwiches.

Many thanks to Earth Balance and Justin’s Nut Butters for donating products for this event!

A PB&J Wedding

On August 8, 2011, Marcus Louie and Julia Hustwit, of Washington, DC, were planning their wedding. Julia checked her inbox and saw two items: a catering quote for $13,000 and an alert about 13 million people starving in East Africa.

Marcus and Julia found the disparity disconcerting, and responded in a beautiful way. First, they made a “donation via Global Giving to provide Plumpy’Nut, a fortified peanut butter, to fight malnutrition in refugees,” as they describe on their wedding website. Then they set up a fundraising page where people could donate to any of five charitable projects in East Africa and one in DC. So far, they’ve raised nearly $10,000.

At the wedding reception, they served variations of PB&J sandwiches from the Peanut Butter Jelly Time Food Truck. Yay! Sandwich options included a variety of jellies and fruits as well as more obscure add-ins such as granola and potato chips. (Marcus and Julia passed on the truck’s meat options, so the reception was all vegetarian.)

The newlyweds made the big day eco-friendly in many other ways. They used recycled, local, and/or organic items whenever practical. They provided compost and recycle bins at the reception. Julia wore a second-hand dress.

Friends, family, and guests enthusiastically embraced the couple’s conscientious wedding and reception–and had a great time. (When was last time you traded versions of PB&J sandwiches at a wedding reception–as many guests did?) The weather was perfect, and so was the event.

If Marcus and Julia’s success inspires you to have an environmentally and socially conscious wedding featuring PB&J, let us know! (No guarantees, but we might even be able to get some donated goods in that department.) In the meantime, we want to add our congratulations and best wishes–and a major thank-you–to Marcus and Julia.

Peanut Butter Cookie Feed-In for the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale

On Wednesday, near the Columbia Heights fountain in Washington, DC, in partnership with our parent organization, A Well-Fed World, we gave out free vegan peanut butter cookies in honor of another campaign we like, the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale.

The cookies went quickly. And nobody (except us) knew they were vegan, until we told them. We also passed out the PB&J Campaign brochure, which lets people know how they can save resources by choosing simple plant-based meals such as PB&J sandwiches.

In case you’re curious…an online search for “vegan peanut butter cookies recipe” yields enough recipes for a lifetime, and lots of interesting and tasty-looking variations.

More Great National PB&J Day Events

This just in—Jamie McCluske, who is the Drama & Musical Publicity Manager and Junior/Senior Class Adviser at Kiski Area High School in Vandergrift, PA, who who also works with elementary school children, got some very cool things to happen for National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. The elementary school cafeterias served PB&J sandwiches, and the high school cafeteria offered two vegetarian options.

Shout-out and great job!

Successful National PB&J Day Events

For National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day–April 2, 2012–we held outreach events at Whole Foods stores in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia and Washington, DC.

At each store, we gave away PB&J mini-sandwiches (artfully cut into triangles) as well as coupons, squeeze packs of peanut butter, and the PB&J Campaign brochure , which touts the resource savings of simple plant-based meals such as PB&J. Major thank-you to Peanut Butter & Co. for their generous donation of peanut butter and coupons.

The customers at both stores were quite receptive. It’s great to find out that your favorite sandwich is also earth-friendly. Many shoppers took the brochures and some asked environmental or health questions about peanut butter.

We may be doing similar events for Earth Day later in the month.

If you or your group would like to do this type of PB&J outreach, we can probably help with supplies. Contact us and/or check out our newly-revised Event Toolkit.

Meanwhile, at the Texas VegFest, which drew 3500 people and had an impressive list of speakers and vendors, one of the festival organizers gave out hard-copy “Take the PB&J Pledge” forms as well as free peanut butter samples (thanks again to Peanut Butter & Co.). The crowd was very receptive here, too. We’ll have more details about this event soon…

PB&J Pledge at Texas VegFest

In commemoration of National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day (rapidly approaching on April 2), the Texas VegFest, March 31, will be offering visitors a hard-copy version of the PB&J Pledge, which we just created for this event. The pledge forms will be at the Texas VegFest booth, along with lots of food samples.

Update: Peanut Butter & Co. will be giving away peanut butter squeeze packs and coupons to festival-goers who fill out the PB&J Pledge.

Soon, we’ll have an option on the web site to make it easy to access the hard-copy pledge form. For now, if you’d like to present the form at a festival, feed-in, or any other occasion, you can download it from the above link, or we can mail you a bunch of copies; email us at pbj@pbjcampaign.org if interested.

We’ll have more news about the PB&J pledge in the not-too-distant future.

National PB&J Day Activities at DC-Area Whole Foods

On April 2 (National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day), from 5pm to 7pm, we’ll be giving away PB&J mini-sandwiches at two Whole Foods stores in the Washington, DC area: the Tysons Whole Foods in Falls Church, Virginia and the P Street Whole Foods in downtown DC. We’ll also be handing out the new PB&J Campaign brochures and letting people know how they can reduce their environmental footprint through simple, plant-based meals such as PB&Js.

We’re very appreciative of the staffs at both Whole Foods, which have been very supportive of the upcoming events.

If you’re in either of these neighborhoods, stop by, say hello, and have some PB&J on us!

There are a couple (or more) other activities in the works for the big day. We’ll have more details on everything soon.