Concept Review: mySchool Cafe – December 2019

Lighter Side – December 2019

Concepts, like case studies, allow us to review a project and determine how well it is working and then determine how the technology can be leveraged to solve other real-world issues. The primary difference between the two is the length and depth of analysis. Using the Pareto principle (found here) we can invest 20% of our effort to achieve significant value.

The Issue: Private schools have challenges managing their food-service operation to ensure consistent product quality, contain costs, and keeping their speed of service sufficiently high to ensure students have enough time to enjoy their meals.  When meal-prep is augmented with outside services, the problem compounds.

mySchool.cafe is a cloud based product for private schools (K-12) to manage their lunch program. It allows parents (or students) to access a website to pre-order, and pay for, their meals.  mySchool manages the process from shelf to student.

The pre-order process allows the kitchen staff to have an accurate prep list for the day and helps streamline the production, as well as planning/inventory, which greatly reduces food waste since only the items that are truly wanted by students is produced for the day.

The daily available selections are published on a calendar similar to the cycle menus used by other organizations. One added element, however, is the ability to have “always available” items which provide some core staples that students love and thus participation is increased.

Real-time connection with Credit Card Processing and the POS ensure the accounts are always funded, using automatic account reloads. Additionally, as the student receives their meal, they are allowed to make other alacarte selections in addition to their pre-ordered meals, further increasing student satisfaction. Transactions are updated real time and a full receipt is available for the parent to review.

The site also provides the ability for school administration to post announcements which are presented to parents as they log in as news items; while a number of schools have dedicated websites for their school announcements, having the ability to focus attention on important notices at the time of meal ordering has proven to be a valuable enhancement.

mySchool uses the concept of a Meal Calendar, which the food service staff publish. Schools have published these calendars for years and it has become a staple. Now, parents have choices beyond the simple pre-selected meals. mySchool prints a customized meal calendar for the student, which reflects their choices, that can be then attached to the family refrigerator for easy reference.

Concept: Pre-order of meals streamlines production and inventory

Since the pre-order listing can be created for any future date, in addition to the morning of service, the food service manager can get an idea of the participation in advance of the serving day thus ensuring inventory is available. These reports are easily generated and can be emailed to the appropriate staff as required.

Concept: Credit Card on file

It has long been know than having a credit card on file increases spend. When the purchase is easy, human nature is to leverage the ease of use and spend. mySchool makes it simple for parents to fund their student accounts. mySchool uses a “family account” concept where all students in the household share a common funding account. This makes account management easier for the parent with multiple children as they only have 1 source to monitor. All transactions are tracked separately by student, as expected.  Receipts are automatically email, or sent via text, to parents in real-time.

Concept: Pre-production Management

The ability to email the pre-production list to kitchen staff allows them to prep their stations efficiently. Like the concept of Order Waves for hospital room service, a concept I developed years ago, it enables a group of meal orders to be processed at the same time. The increase in efficiency is quite remarkable. Class schedules with meal counts are also sent to the serving staff so they know what to expect at time of service when multiple lunch schedules are used.

Taking the meal pre-pay concept to the next level and including the meal prep, serving, and delivery management has allowed mySchool to empower private schools to reclaim control of their food service program. Parents love the easy of use, and customized calendar. A win-win.

Happy Computing
\\//\\//olf

Wolf Scott,
CEO, Newcare International
wscott@newcare.io
https://newcare.international

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