The beginning of the school year is a busy time for parent teacher organizations to raise funds for events, field trips, school supplies, athletics, and more. Fundraisers also help PTO or PTA volunteers get involved with their school community to reach their organization's goals. While raising money can be as easy as requesting a donation, hosting events or contests can increase participation and provide a fun experience for families. Here are some unique fundraising ideas for your parent organizations this upcoming school year: 

It's no secret that students can get tired of eating the same thing over and over again. Offering different and new menu items can freshen up your meals and get students excited about eating in the cafeteria. Hosting a taste test event is a great way to get students involved in choosing new menu items and learning more about their preferences. A successful taste test gives students the opportunity to try new recipes and share valuable feedback before you start serving them on a regular basis.

Getting started is easier than you think! Here are some strategies to help make your taste testing event successful:

Creating a school garden is a fun and engaging way to give students a hands-on learning experience. School gardens help students learn about eating healthy, growing their own food, and can have a more meaningful impact when it comes to the nutritional decisions they make. While traditional school gardens remain very popular, some districts are taking this idea to the next level with aquaponic gardens.

School cafeterias serve millions of meals to students each day. And as the end of the school year approaches, so does the uneasy task of collecting unpaid student meal balances.

 
Lunchtime is often considered crunch time for school food service staff - for more reasons than one! Serving meals quickly and efficiently, while also making sure students have time to eat, can be a challenge for many schools. That's why any feature or method that can help speed up your serving lines, even by a few seconds, can be monumental.

One school district in Northern California found that simply using audio messages at their Point of Sale stations helped to increase their line speed and satisfaction among the students.

On Friday, May 3, food service professionals will be celebrating the 7th Annual School Lunch Hero Day. This day provides the perfect opportunity to recognize those individuals who work so diligently throughout the year to serve nutritious and delicious meals to our students. The impressions they make on each child that comes through the cafeteria is remarkable.

This week schools and programs nationwide are celebrating all that afterschool professionals do each day! It's a time to recognize those who work with students during out-of-school hours, including community partners, afterschool program staff, and youth and child care workers. 

That's a great question and likely one that many nutrition programs may not be able to answer. It’s estimated that K-12 schools throw away roughly $1.2 billion dollars worth of food each year! One study found that K-12 schools in Minnesota generated 483,520 lbs. of waste in a given school day and the most prominent category of items filling up the trash cans was food waste.

In the '90s, the school nutrition industry started to embrace computerized Point of Sale (POS) systems as a way to better track what was being sold and make it easier to manage student accounts. Today, many school nutrition professionals believe the biggest value of their POS system is at the serving line. While this is true (after all, that is where the transaction is created), the real power of a POS system is in the reporting.

Reports are often underutilized and can provide more information than many folks realize. Beyond the basics of how many meals have been served or the total sales for a given period, reports can help you identify opportunities for operational improvement or areas for increased participation.

Making sure your serving lines are properly configured to reflect the way your schools serve meals and à la carte items will ensure you get the most from your POS reports.