Make lunchtime a good experience
Food wrist bands
Music at lunchtime
Getting instant feedback about lunch
Our Lady & St Edwards Primary school in Nottingham City wanted to improve their lunchtime and make it a better experience for pupils. To make changes on a small scale that would deliver big improvements, the school took part in the Adopt a School program, facilitated by the Million Meals team of the School Food Trust.
This program helped the school achieve an increase in take up of 11% as well as deliver other improvements which all contributed to help the school reach their objective.
The changes that the school wanted to achieve were driven forward by the school leads for the school meal provision, and assisted by Jacquie Blake the Operations Manager for Nottingham City Council.
The school’s catering provision is delivered by the Local Authority who were also involved in the program. The school has 243 pupils on roll.
The areas concentrated on were:
Food wrist bands
The school introduced wrist bands that are issued to pupils during morning registration. A pupil chooses what he / she would like for lunch from the menu and each dish is colour coded. A record of each wrist band issued is then given to the kitchen, so they know how much of each dish to prepare. When a pupil arrives at the servery, the serving cook will instantly know which meal that pupil has ordered by looking at the colour of the band on his / her wrist.
Overall, this has greatly improved the speed of the queue, reduces waste and ensures that all pupils are able to eat what their first choice of meal is. These significant improvements have ultimately improved the lunchtime that pupil’s experience.
Music at lunchtime
For schools that have a problem with noise levels in the dining area, you may be surprised to hear of the results that Our Lady & St Edwards Primary school had. They set a plan in place to introduce different music genres for up to 2 days per week over a 5 week period, and during each of these days, the school also introduced the smiley face charts as outlined below. The surprising result was that where music was played that it was assumed would appeal to the pupils, noise actually increased, however for music that seemed unusual and not what would appeal to the pupils, the noise decreased. The music played more frequently now is Spanish Guitar and Classical.
Smiley face chart
The school placed flipcharts at the exits to the dining area and drew a line down the middle of the page. On one side of the line is a drawing of a happy face and on the other, a sad face. The objective here is to get a snapshot view of what your pupils think about their school meal experience while it is still fresh in their minds. You can use senior pupils at each exit to encourage the pupils as they leave to draw a face on either side of the line which describes how they feel. Pupils should not be discouraged from making relevant comments too as this can expand on their thoughts and supply you with great feedback.
This exercise is very useful when you introduce something to the new dining area for example, change or introduction of music, new queuing system, wrist bands, different servery layout etc.
Our Lady & St Edwards school on each occasion of placing these flipcharts at the exits did not tell the pupils what they should be giving an opinion on. There was a marked difference of satisfaction (happy faces being drawn) when the music style changed. The school reacted to this feedback positively and changed the music accordingly. This resulted in music being played which appealed to the pupils and as a result, noise levels went down.
In addition, when wrist bands were introduced pupil perception was that the queuing time was reduced. This also had a positive effect and produced happy faces and positive comments.
In summary, the school introduced food wrist bands so that all pupils would be able to have their first choice at lunch every day. As a customer this is vital if one aims to retain custom and ensure a customer’s experience is enjoyable. Additionally, this really helps to control waste as you only cook food for the amount of pupils that request each dish.
Introducing flipcharts to record instant feedback from customers is also vital so that you know where improvements are being made and also to help you understand the initial thoughts of your customers about any changes you make.
For larger schools, it may be worth introducing food bands on a gradual basis by year group and measuring the waste before and after the introduction to see the impact you have achieved. This can help to spur your team on to other improvements!
If you would like further information regarding this case study then please feel free to contact the School Food Trust on 0800 089 5001. Alternatively please feel free to email any enquiries to info@sft.gsi.gov.uk Thank you.
