3 Ways to Speed Up Lunch Line Slow-Downs
Most students only have between 15-30 minutes every day for lunch at their school. With your cafeteria staff focused on feeding students within limited lunch periods, each second matters. The last thing you or your team wants is for students to get stuck in a long lunch line while minutes tick by, or for your frontline cafeteria workers to become overstressed and overwhelmed by lunch line backups and poorly performing software and systems.
These are scenarios that happen often, but your school cafeteria doesn’t have to perform this way. When better cafeteria management and organization, solutions, software, and support combine, schools can transform their mealtime operations.
Consider Restructuring Your Cafeteria with Multiple Lunch Lines
If you don’t have multiple check-out points already, and your school is serious about speeding up serving during school mealtimes, more lines will keep students moving through the cafeteria at a steady pace. Whether you’re adding extra check-out points to process all mealtime transactions or adding specific lines for specific food items or purchases, this solution depends on your staffing budget and availability, the set-up of your lunchroom, and the amount of space available.
Eliminate Cash Handling and Invest in Supportive Software
Replacing crumpled-up dollar bills and loose change with speedy click-and-go payments is one of the easiest ways to move students through their lunch lines faster and more efficiently. With our EZSchoolPay school payment processing software, school districts can reduce or eliminate cash handling to speed up lines and lower labor costs across their cafeterias. EZSchoolPay processes payments directly into the cafeteria POS system, which gives students more time to eat lunch–rather than digging into their pockets and backpacks for lunch money–reduces human errors, and gives your cafeteria workers a reason to breathe easier.
Complete School Nutrition Software is the Way to Go
When you’re responsible for feeding hundreds or even thousands of students per day, you need a fast, reliable POS system that is simple to learn, easy to implement, and easy to use. And, you need to know it will fully integrate and support all of your lunchtime operations, in and out of the cafeteria. eTrition is a comprehensive school nutrition software solution that integrates into and streamlines your existing processes–meaning lunch lines move faster, students are more engaged, and your entire school nutrition team is working better and more efficiently together.
Slow lunch lines are often the single most significant source of frustration for frontline cafeteria staff and your students. That’s why we’ve created the most effective, efficient, and cutting-edge school nutrition tools and support to streamline even the most complicated school food service programs. At Harris School Nutrition Solutions, we know what it takes to turn your district’s School Nutrition program frustrations and challenges around. Contact our friendly experts to learn more and see our school nutrition solutions in action.