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Borrowing ideas and innovation from your peers

Busy day boxes

We invite managers to call down and place orders for their units, and we take the lunches up to them.

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Winter Meal Plan

02-15-2013 Ideas and Innovation

We offered a meal plan to our students who decided to stay on campus during winter break. The plan was designed to increase revenue and provide additional student services while creating more...

Coupon Giveaway

02-14-2013 Ideas and Innovation

The district’s wellness department has bought lunch coupons and given them away to staff and administrators for them to eat our school lunches. That helps promote wellness because we have...

We have made good use of our contact with local universities to recruit dining services associates. More than half of our diet aides are currently dietetic or foodservice management students at area...

Gluten-free Training

02-12-2013 Ideas and Innovation

We identified a Food Allergen Advisory Team composed of 10 managers, chefs, cooks and our dietitian. The whole team will complete the Great Gluten-Free Kitchens training program designed and offered...

Color Coded Menus

02-11-2013 Ideas and Innovation

To help me keep track of the new meal regulations, I color code my menus. So for all the vegetable sub groups that we have to meet, I track those through color on my menus. For example, an orange...

Vegetarian Signs

02-05-2013 Ideas and Innovation

After meeting with a vegetarian focus group we marked our standard menu items to make it easier to recognize the menu items that are vegetarian. Things like salad dressings, grilled sandwiches and...

Whoopie Pies

02-01-2013 Ideas and Innovation

In a dessert special this fall, our bakeshop made an assortment of whoopie pies filled with different flavors. We created a choose-your-own combo, or the students could create their own combo of...

Pumpkin Carving

01-29-2013 Ideas and Innovation

We had a pumpkin carving contest in our cafeteria. We supplied the pumpkins, and staff members were able to take their pumpkins home and then submit their entries. Customers voted on the submissions...

Filter Water

01-27-2013 Ideas and Innovation

It’s an important step to filter your water in all food-related areas of your operation. Every kitchen should have filtered water for soups, stock, coffee, fountain systems, ice water, fine...