Life in the school cafeteria has changed a lot over the past year and a half. Dealing with social distancing, additional lunch periods, and more cleaning protocols placed additional pressure on school lunch staff to make sure students and staff still were fed nutritious meals quickly.
As schools continue to reopen and adjust, the industry must come up with more innovative ways that help cut back on gathering crowds and focus on convenience and safety. Having up-to-date, efficient merchandisers on hand to help with providing speedy school lunch service are a winning solution.
Offering solutions for both hot and cold products, merchandisers have provided easy access to continue serving pre-packaged items for students without clogging up access or requiring a long wait. Three of the main reasons merchandisers are such a key solution for school foodservice programs are:
Transparency: Offer students full transparency on the items you offer through simple visibility. This isn't only enticing, but it helps build trust.
Cost-effective: Merchandisers help school systems save money by lowering the costs of labor, serving, and reducing energy.
Safe and Sanitized: Shelves in merchandisers are easy to remove and the open space is incredibly simple to clean. Merchandisers are also great for reducing touch points within your foodservice operation.
Federal’s new 3-ft Refrigerated Self-Serve Milk Merchandiser and our 4-ft Refrigerated Self-Serve Milk Merchandiser, both make serving in the cafeteria a smooth and accessible process for everyone. With solid state controls you can adjust the temperature at any given time as needed. Insulated tempered clear glass makes items visible while protecting your products and reducing potential waste.
With 3 tiers of tilting shelves, you can stock pre-packaged food and drinks in an organized manner while utilizing the stainless crate riser at the bottom of the cases to keep milk and other beverages separate but within grabbing distance. There are also options for rear doors to assist with loading and refilling the cases. Students and faculty can quickly and efficiently select the items they want from one convenient location, or with multiple cases, you can further organize and maintain crowd control based on product options.
From helping smooth out traffic in lines to making serving simple, the durable display cases are unbeatable in the industry. You'll find that some merchandisers are refrigerated while others are heated. Some offer both cold and hot storage, offering the chance to keep food ready to serve in a warm or chilled state so that all you have to worry about is refilling the shelves as needed.
These self-serve solutions come in all shapes and sizes to assist in large and small productions. Whether your school is public or private, and you have a large or small student body, there's a merchandiser that can sufficiently store what you need during eating hours. One of the many benefits of having a variety of cases to choose from is that you can specify the needs of your foodservice operations and pick out a solution that best fits them.
It's never been more simple to prepare, serve, and manage school meals.
Are you ready to introduce grab-and-go merchandisers to your school? Get your free school merchandiser assessment today to find out which display cases will bring you the most benefits and help you optimize school meals.