Todays school lunch and some thoughts about selling school food to staff

Whilst I was making my way to the school hall for my lunch today a colleague passed me and asked if the sandwich lady had arrived yet. Now normally when ever anyone tells me that there school dinners are great my one question is - do the school staff eat them? If the meals are fantastic there is usually a healthy staff take up. This got me thinking as our school dinners are good yet staff rarely pass the hall to see, let alone eat. Partly this is due to pressure of time as staff are often busy setting up for the afternoon and of course some times you need a break far away from the kids.But maybe caterers could do more to promote their meals to staff? It must be a pretty captive market judging by the amount of staff who visit local shops.

In this current economic climate caterers are going to have to think out of the box. Cultivating a school staff trade would surely help with the bottom line. One enterprising secondary school in Bristol I visited which provided outstandingly good food, used to sell trays of food to busy teachers to take home to serve their families in the evening. It isnt going to solve the funding crisis facing the school meals service but as that well known grocers says,"every little helps!"