With the inception of the new dining system, the staff have found a successful way to deliver food safely and efficiently, with no cost to student satisfaction with the food. The effort has not come easily as the dining staff has had to work with a large amount of data from students and then find a way to accurately give them their meals. They attempted to maximize the choice that students could have without exacerbating the already long meal preparation time. The Panel decided to survey students’ response to this procedure. As seen with many of the student responses, the dining staff has succeeded in their planning, and we are all grateful for the measures they have taken.
Students have come forward with comments and opinions about the new dining experience. We asked them to state their favorite meal so far, make an optional suggestion for a future item and if they had any further comments. With sixteen weekly options (for day students), boys decided that their favorite meals were the Chicken Salad Sandwich and the Chicken Caesar Wrap with the Ham/Roast Beef Cheddar sandwich coming in a close second. When asked to suggest a new meal option, students widely asked for a hot option to be offered like a meatball sub, chicken nuggets, pasta or even slices of pizza. Many students who suggested these options stated that they understood this may not be possible considering the delivery process.
On the second part of the survey, students provided feedback on the food committee, as well as additional comments. Interestingly only around ⅔ of the student body surveyed knew about the food committee, with more than ½ students giving a rating of the food less than three. Also, the most common rating for the food committee’s procedures was a three, which means people are unsure about their thoughts. Though the results of the survey were overwhelmingly positive, the school can still improve. The food committee has an opportunity to reinvent itself and make lunch as good as possible.
Lastly here are a sundry of requests that we selected:
“I would like to see water in the lunches more often, given that all the water fountains are blocked off due to COVID-19.”
“Stop putting tomatoes on every meal!”
“NEED MORE FOOD IT’S NOT ENOUGH”
Considering the results, it seems students ultimately enjoy the new lunch service with many commending the dining hall for their efforts. The delivery process has been successful by the large amount of students who rated the process (5/5) and the quality of the food has been rated mostly with a (4/5). During lunch in the past, many students have complained about the quality of the food; however, with the new lunch system and meals, the approval rate seems to have increased drastically. Also, in the classroom, there seem to be many more positive comments about the food. Congratulations to the Dining Team and the school administration for a great idea with, in our opinion, a seamless deployment. A few comments from students below have been pasted in to give an idea of what students would like.
We have also shared some comments with Ms. Wu, the director of the lunch program for further review.
“We are so happy to be back, providing dining services to our school community. Along with many of the changes made by the entire school in this COVID – 19 environment, the box lunch delivery service is also an immense undertaking that requires a lot of planning, set-up, training, and support. Every member of the dining team has stepped up to meet the challenges from the early stages of menu planning, reconfiguring our production and storage space to streamlining and managing the many processes associated with this type of service(from the front end to the back end). We are grateful for the support and collaborative efforts from everyone in the school community. As I’ve mentioned before, the teamwork behind the scenes in making this a success has truly been inspiring to experience and witness.”
