When you can't even give away free food...

Last week, we talked about building rapport with your customers - your students. In Part 3 of our 4-part series, "Essential Keys to Your Success in 2021," let's talk about?what to do when you can't even give the food away - and how we increased participation in a cafeteria by 30%!

I had to increase sales in a school where the free and reduced percentage was at 90% while the participation rate was below 20%. This school could not “GIVE AWAY FREE FOOD.” This means students would rather go hungry than to come to the cafeteria and get a free meal. I will use another analogy: that is equivalent to me offering you a free tank of gas, you turning me down and instead paying for a full tank yourself. I know that sounds INSANE but that is what was going on in the cafeteria.

As a team, we had to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and go to work. We met with a group of students to first address the customer service and food offerings. We found out that the students were treated poorly at the point of sale. They were told “to hurry” up through the line, or asked callously “what do you want?” I was initially disturbed when I heard this but I have always said, “if you don’t know any better, you can’t do any better”. The next point that came up was that the hot food was cold and the cold food was hot. The food on the line looked like the staff was in a rush to go home. In essence, the staff would come into work and cook everything on the menu and PACK it into the warmers. They would put the cold items on the line and they would start to clean up so they could go home on time.

How can you have food on the line or warmers at 9am and lunch is not served until 11am? If you had the last lunch shift you were in for a real treat (in my sarcastic tone), iceberg burgers with warm milk. So, I conducted professional development with the staff to address the customer service and food quality issues.

Within two months, we increased participation the school's cafeteria participation by 30%. Not bad for a school everyone had given up on!

• Here is what you can do to have the same success:?
• Ensure that all of your cashiers are addressing the students by name or raise the bar and address them as yes sir or mam. Huh? Yes, just do it. This will display a newfound level of respect for your staff.
• Meet with student groups like band, student government, DECA, safety patrol etc. Getting involved will put a face to the cafeteria and you will not be known as “just” cafeteria workers. You will be known as Bill, Shelly or Teresa.
• Sample product offerings frequently. The students need to know what is on the menu before it is served at lunch. I suggest that you take the same approach of the food court in a mall. Hand out samples. Yes, take the retail approach and give out samples to your customers because it will build a rapport with your student base and establish you as a team that provides excellent service.

Stay tuned for the continuation of this series, when I'll share?ways you can increase participation by 10% in two months.?