Dinner Buddies — Picky Eater Food Exploration Game

Make exploring food feel more like play and less like pressure.

Dinner Buddies is a printable, play-based food exploration game inspired by feeding therapy techniques. It helps children become more comfortable with new or learning foods through imagination, familiar characters and small, manageable steps.

Instead of making eating the goal, Dinner Buddies celebrates every interaction with food—from simply looking at it to touching, smelling, licking or trying a micro bite. Your child is always allowed to stop at any step.

HOW DINNER BUDDIES WORKS

Choose three foods together:

• Cloud Comfort Food—a familiar food your child already enjoys
• Learning Food—a new food or one your child is practicing
• Treasure Food—a favorite or exciting food

Your child chooses a Dinner Buddy and a story mission before moving through the five Adventure Steps:

1. Look
2. Touch
3. Smell
4. Tiny Lick
5. Micro Bite

Each step is a win! Children can earn Power-Up Stars for effort, bravery and participation—not for how much they eat.

CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER THEME

Pixel Pals
Join Crumble, Cloudy, Sniffles, Tiny, Nibble and Bitey on a colorful food adventure.

Magical Creatures
Explore with Petal the fairy, Lumi the unicorn, Nova the pegasus, Glimmer the griffin and Blaze the dragon.

Dinosaur Buddies
Travel back in time with Spike, Rexie, Zippy, Tessa and Bruno for a prehistoric food adventure.

Penguin Buddies
Explore an icy kingdom with Waddles, Pip, Skip, Berry and Nori.

Complete Collection
Receive all four character themes so your child can choose a different adventure whenever they play.

WHAT'S INCLUDED

• How-to-play guide
• Printable Dinner Buddies food mat
• Themed Adventure Path
• Printable Dinner Buddy characters
• Five-step food exploration system
• Parent scripts for calm, low-pressure support
• 15 imaginative story missions
• Printable food exploration log
• Power-Up Star reward system

WHY FAMILIES LOVE DINNER BUDDIES

• Turns food exploration into imaginative play
• Gives children meaningful choices and a sense of control
• Encourages interaction before tasting
• Breaks food exploration into small, manageable steps
• Includes parent-friendly language for keeping mealtimes low-pressure
• Celebrates progress without requiring a child to eat
• Can be printed and used again and again

Dinner Buddies works best when a parent or caregiver plays alongside the child. Follow your child's pace, keep the experience playful and celebrate every step forward—no matter how small.

This is a digital product. No physical item will be mailed. You will receive printable files for the character theme selected at checkout. The Complete Collection includes every character theme.

Dinner Buddies is an educational, play-based resource and is not a substitute for individualized medical advice or feeding therapy.