Now that you have the first weeks of the 2020 school year under your belt, it’s important to take a moment to assess how your School Nutrition program is faring so far. Remember, it’s better to invest a little time and effort into making an adjustment right now – even if you’re super busy – than it is to “tough it out” for the rest of the year, especially with so many unknowns still ahead.
VIDEO: How to Adapt Your School Nutrition Program for Fall 2020
Here are some key areas you should question and assess:
1. Payments
Is your payment system truly “touch-free,” or are there still some contact points that you need to work out of your process?
If you want some insight on what a quality contactless payment solution can do for your school and your School Nutrition program, read our article, “How to Find the Best Contactless Payment System for Your School Nutrition Program.”
2. Hardware
Do you have all of the physical tools you need, like screen covers, temperature-check kiosks, and plexiglass shields?
Visit our article, “11 Must-Have Hardware Items for Contact-Free School Nutrition,” to find out what you may be missing.
3. Ordering
Now that you’ve likely had to re-supply by ordering more food or other school lunch items, have you encountered any hiccups? If so, don’t wait any longer to reconsider your process, from your School Nutrition management software to your ability to provide pre-ordering, and remove the guess work.
4. Participation
Are your participation levels down? It’s not uncommon for this to happen, given all the uncertainty. Fortunately, there is a list of ways you can overcome the chaos and boost participation in your School Nutrition program. Read this article, “How to Increase School Lunch Participation in Non-Traditional Locations.”
5. Serving in Non-traditional Locations, including Multi-Day Curbside
Have you been serving in classrooms? In the cafeteria? Both? Maybe you thought you could serve curbside, but didn’t realize you would need to serve meals for multiple days at once to accommodate staggered-day class schedules.
This one is extra tricky because serving strategies can change rapidly according to new mandates from the district and various levels of government. There aren’t many solutions available for overcoming the multi-day serving/entry challenge. In fact, HSS is one of the few providers to create a tool that accommodates multi-day serving and entry, which you can read about in the news article, “One-Click School Nutrition: HSS Innovates with MULTI-DAY Curbside Pickup Solution.”
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