The week of May 6-12 is national Nurse Appreciation Week and it’s one of the busiest weeks of the year for our mobile smoothie catering business at Maui Wowi. We have been serving hospitals for over a decade that recognize the contribution of their nurses and medical support staff.

Here’s an idea: have a smoothie bar for your nursing staff (we can serve many hundreds an hour) and incorporate some fun promotional product gifts as well. A great company to contact is Positive Promotions. They’ve come up with a number of ideas to accompany a refreshing Maui Wowi smoothie at your event. We love the themes they’ve developed, like Living the Scrub Life. A great logo and positive message on a pair of cushioned ankle socks, a tote bag, a lunch cooler bag, a coffee-to-go mug set (and no reason we can’t pour a smoothie into those cups!) and many other employee appreciation and recognition ideas can be found on their website.

Maui Wowi can provide our mobile smoothie catering service for any size group. One of the larger groups we work with is Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. The last annual employee appreciation event we catered for them with our smoothie bar involved 2000+ attendees over three shifts from 11am to 1am. (That’s AM with an A.) The hospital’s HR team came up with a great theme – Superheros, to make the staff feel like the superheroes they truly are. The leadership provided novelties, signage and apparel to support the theme. The Maui Wowi staff even wore Superman t-shirts (although we told people the “S” stood for “Smoothie-Man)!

And for all of you trivia and crossword fans out there who may be wondering about the timing of national nurses week, which ends on May 12, there is something special about that date. It’s the birthday of Florence Nightingale. As anyone in the medical profession knows, Florence was an English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, in which she organized care for wounded soldiers. (OK, so you didn’t know that, but now you do and you can impress your friends over a Maui Wowi smoothie at your next employee appreciation event.)