Your point of sale is the center of your nutrition operation during serving periods. With an average lunch period lasting only 25 minutes, students want to get through the line quickly so they have time to eat and chat with friends.

While there are many adjustments you can make to speed up your serving lines, optimizing your menu boards can also help shave a few precious seconds off the time it takes to enter a transaction.

Here are 8 tips for building menu boards that help make your cashier's job easier and your lines move faster:

Having been a part of the K-12 industry for decades, we know that your student information system is like the central control room for your school district. It’s how schools keep track of all student data, from grading and test scores, tracking student attendance, building class schedules, and everything in between. So when data can flow easily – and securely – between your SIS and other programs in your district, it can really save time and bring added efficiencies for school administrators, parents, and students.

Remember the first day you started using your new POS computers? Everything was shiny and clean, your POS system ran fast (or so we hope), and your pin pads worked perfectly.  Now fast forward to today.  Is that still the same story?

Having up-to-date student information in your cafeteria point of sale (POS) system is vital to running a successful operation.  Serving reimbursable meals, end of the day reporting, and reconciling deposits all depend on the quality of your student information.  Understanding how to get this information out of your Student Information System (SIS) and into your POS system is an important first step.

We're excited to announce the launch of our brand new website!

With the new site, you can learn more about Heartland’s latest product developments like MSB Anywhere - our mobile Point of Sale solution that allows you to take student payments anywhere on campus.

You can also find out what tradeshows and conferences we will be attending, or register for upcoming software training, like our Mosaic User Group Training or NUTRIKIDS Point of Sale online training. 

We’re thrilled about all the information we’ll be able to share with you on our new website and we hope you like it too.

For many people (including myself), talking about data protection can be a boring topic.  Like buying insurance for your car or house, we don't want to think about the consequences of not having it until something goes wrong.  Well, the same logic applies to your program data.  Whether your district uses a Point of Sale (POS), Menu Planning or Inventory solution, making sure your data stays safe is paramount.

It's hard to believe, but summer break is more than halfway over for many school districts across the country.  For Food Service Directors, this means it's time to start thinking about, and planning for, the start of the new school year.

Fully-hosted solutions, cloud computing, web-based software – these terms all sound complicated, cumbersome, and confusing. But in reality, utilizing cloud-based solutions can simplify your entire school nutrition program.

With the end of the school year upon us, now is the perfect time to make sure your front of house (Point of Sale) and back of house (Menu Planning, Inventory) systems are ready for their long summer slumber.

You may have been asking yourself, I'm done serving... now what?  Don't worry, you're not alone! Here are 7 things you can do to keep your cafeteria systems happy this summer:

Has this scenario ever happened to one of your cashiers?

The bell rings and before they can even sign into their POS stations, a line of kids is stretched around the whole cafeteria waiting for a hot, nutritious lunch.

In many schools across the country, students get 30 minutes or less to go through the lunch line and eat their lunch. Often times, the lunch period might even be split with recess or other school activities.

This makes the job of a cashier especially critical for making sure students get through the serving line as quickly as possible.