Kiama High School
Julie Wicken, the Kiama High School Canteen Manager, was having problems recruiting volunteers, and selling healthy foods to the senior students. Here is how the school tackled these common problems.
Lack of Volunteers
Kiama High School was having problems recruiting volunteers to assist the school canteen. To deal with this issue, Julie worked with the school to create a “position vacant” advertisement to insert into the year 7 new student packs. The aim of this was to catch the eye of parents to inform them of how the canteen operates and that they were in need of volunteers to ensure the continued operation of the school canteen.
The second strategy adopted by Kiama High School was to run a fridge magnet competition for all of the year 7 students.
Fridge Magnet Competition
The competition was run through the year 7 students art classes as an assessment. Students had to draw a picture on A4 paper, promoting a healthy canteen using the words “Kiama High School”, “Healthy Canteen” and the schools telephone number. Once all of the students had completed their A4 poster the teachers selected the two winning designs, which were then made into fridge magnets for the students to take home. The two students who won the competition were given a voucher to the local DVD store.
The purpose of the magnets is to jog the memory of parents to volunteer at the canteen and to ensure that the canteen’s phone number is always close at hand for parents and volunteers.
Attracting Senior Students to the Canteen
The school was finding that students were leaving the school grounds to purchase foods from local take-away stores rather then purchasing from the school canteen. This presented two problems, firstly, the students were regularly eating unhealthy (“occasional”) take-away foods rather then selecting the healthy choices offered by the canteen, and secondly, leaving the school grounds during school hours was presenting a safety risk to the students.
The challenge was to provide the senior students with attractive meals so that they would purchase their lunch from the school canteen rather then leaving the school grounds to purchase a less healthy lunch.
Julie decided to introduce a senior menu and a “meal deal” to the school canteen. These senior meals were more expensive then the regular meals and were only available to senior students. The senior students were also given extended hours to order their lunch and didn’t have to wait in line to pick up their food. Menu items included nachos, fried rice with chicken, foccacias, lasagne, pizza and a ‘make your own sandwich’ option.
The most popular item on the menu: Chicken schnitzel on Turkish bread with mayo or sweet chili sauce.
Specials – Seniors Only
Monday – Nachos $5
Tuesday – Fried rice with chicken pieces and sweet and sour sauce $5
Wednesday – Foccacia with turkey, cranberry sauce, cream cheese and pineapple $5
Thursday – Homemade lasagne $5
Friday – Pizza $3.50
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