CASHLESS CATERING SYSTEMS IN SCHOOLS CAN SAVE MONEY AND TIME, INCREASE EFFICIENCY AND EVEN HELP BOOST MEAL UPTAKE, ACCORDING TO ORGANISERS OF A PIONEERING SCHEME IN CROYDON.
Schools, local authorities, consultants and contract caterers gathered to hear details at the 'Cashless Schools Conference' yesterday hosted by Croydon Council's meals service Food in Schools.
Allyson Lloyd, corporate catering manager of Food in Schools, told delegates it had cost £500,000 to introduce the cashless system and under agreement with schools a £1 per pupil fee was levied each year to cover maintenance.
But against that she estimated the programme had achieved more than £750,000 in efficiency savings.

The Croydon scheme began with a pilot project in 2007, before starting to roll it out across 127 schools in 2008 at a rate of about four schools a week.
Food in Schools teamed up with ParentPay and Nationwide Retail Systems to design a system adapted to the needs of the council, schools and incumbent contract caterer Eden Foodservice.

The flexibility of the scheme permits children to have an account and access it whenever they choose to have a meal without the need to notify anyone.
Lloyd said this had not only helped increase meal sales, but had not led to either enormous over-production of food or children left with no choice towards the end of service.

Eden managing director Simon James said: "Meal sales were up 5.1% in 2009 over 2008 and that is partly down to the cashless system. As professional caterers we know our customers and we know which meals and which days are likely to be more popular so there has never been an issue of having too many children to feed and not enough food."

Source: Cost Sector Catering 
Web: http://www.costsectorcatering.co.uk/

Read more: First reward card for young people to launch in Barking and Dagenham

Following a tender for an integrated cashless payment and meal management solution, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham awarded the contract to Nationwide Retail Systems (NRS).  NRS will provide the Council with a central borough wide system for cashless catering as part of the Council’s Youth Access Project which is due to launch in January 2010.

Starting in 2008 the Barking and Dagenham Strategic Partnership began a three year programme of change for children to improve the life expectancy, and quality of life, of children and young people living in the borough.

As part of the programme, the borough’s Youth Access Card will integrate to create a new healthy life aspiration across schools catering, leisure and libraries, providing incentives to improve meal uptake and particularly healthy eating choices, and assist in improving pupil attendance and pupil behaviour. Primary and secondary schools across the London Borough will benefit from an NRS ePOS cashless catering solution, integrated with ParentPay Data Capture™, so parents can pay and view their children’s meal choices online.

Kevin Taggart, Project Manager Youth Access, said: “The NRS and Parent Pay solution is a winning proposal in which we can all have confidence.

“We look forward to working with our partners to deliver on our significant programme of change within Barking and Dagenham.”

Alan Fletcher, Managing Director of NRS, said: “We were delighted and are proud to be associated with such a cutting edge and far reaching programme which would benefit the young people of Barking and Dagenham both now and in the future. NRS will continue to develop their solution alongside Barking and Dagenham to ensure the Youth Access Project is a great success.”

Enfield council have awarded their cashless catering and central council management system to Nationwide Retail Systems Ltd.

Jacqui Conn, Business Analyst, Resources and IT Education, Children's Services and Leisure writes:-

" Enfield have purchased a fully integrated Cashless Catering Solution form NRS because it offers full functionality in the school dining hall, kitchen and back office including stock-taking for each school site and for the whole service.  This system will allow Enfield Catering Services to produce the meal selections that sell best and that the children want, cutting down on wastage and disappointed pupils who are last in the queue!   We have chosen NRS because the system is home-grown and developed in-house, even the technical support teams work for the company.   Although implementation is in the early stages, the implementation teams seem to be well-organised and available whenever needed which is very important when you are dealing with over 80 different school sites, I am very confident that NRS is the perfect choice for Enfield. "

Nationwide look forward to working with Enfield as a business partner.
See our trust-e cashless solution at:-
www.trust-e.co.uk or contact Nationwide for a demonstration of the full central solution.