Kingman Unified School District (AZ) Sees Reduction in Headaches, Support Calls and Data Inaccuracies

Overview
Kingman Unified School District’s eleven schools serve over 2,000 square miles in Arizona. Each day the cafeteria staff of 65 serves nearly 7,400 students. In 2010-2012 they served over 200,800 breakfasts and 667,000 lunches.

District Obstacles
With their previous cafeteria management system, Food Service Director Paula Loomis and Administrative Assistant Joyce Dryden had a lot of seemingly small issues that when compiled together took up hours of their workday. Inaccuracies were common because they couldn’t see their cashiers’ data in real-time. So hours had to be dedicated to updating reports for a point of sale system that wasn’t easy to use. And their online payment system was causing headaches for not only district staff, but parents as well. Parents frequently called the school office to request up-to-date information and the schools didn’t have access to it. And because the online payment system wasn’t easy to use, more parents opted to pay by checks, which sometimes bounced, increasing the Food Service Departments unpaid lunch debt.

Finding the Answer
Paula and Joyce needed something easier to use with up-to-date data that they could be confident was accurate. They wanted a complete system with more available tools including Inventory Management. They needed access to their cashier reports immediately to address issues before they became a problem. And the price needed to be right.

Results
After seeing the system in-depth with John Nelson of Meals Plus, they exclaimed, “Great – How quickly can we start??” They now have the ability to monitor all sites from the district office during or after operations, greatly reducing any data inaccuracies. Parents love the ability to access their child’s lunch payment information online and even see a full meal history of what their child bought. And when they do have a question, district staff is able to easily assist them. But perhaps best of all is the ease-of-use that comes with the Meals Plus System, which is reflected in the dramatic decrease in number of support calls for their district.