In these days of the dual income family, mums working a few days a week in the school canteen for free can seem like a quaint idea. Yet the school canteen offers a benefit both to the P&C as a source of funding, to teachers who want to buy lunch and busy mums and dads who don't get lunch made. By some innovative thinking the canteen can continue to be profitable for schools.
Here are some tips to keep your canteen trucking along.
Work requirements
For parents and carers on a parenting payment, voluntary work in the school canteen can count towards the fifteen hours per week participation requirements. It can be shown that canteen work provides a pathway into hospitality jobs and you can always discuss this with your local Centrelink office if you are struggling to find staffing from your parent body.
Outsource some days of canteen orders
You may be able to outsource preparation of the food and delivery to some local lunchbars, and chains (such as Hearty Health). The lunchbars usually offer a percentage of orders back to the P&C and the load of runnning the canteen is reduced. Many children and staff appreciate the variation in menu that outsourcing can bring.
Start to pay workers
If you cannot find voluntary workers paying a small wage may attract mums who are looking for school hours only work. You can look to incorporate the labour cost back into the canteen prices to push the costs back onto the parents who are purchasing goods and not volunteering by this mechanism.
Broaden the service offering
If you are finding it hard to get the necessary volume through the kitchen consider broadening the range through your kitchen to include other option such as take home, reheat dinners like lasagne which are often popular with working parents, espresso bars for parents at drop off and breakfast menus for before school care.
Take requests from the community
By opening up the menu to some popularly requested items, you can find some healthy and affordable new options. Why not run a cook-off in the same vein as a popular cooking show to find some winning recipes - you can even sell tickets as a fundrasier!
For student populations from more diverse backgrounds including some healthy ethnic dishes can be attractive to parents, staff and students who might be offput by outdated menus of tuna mornay and vegemite sandwiches.
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