North Lakes State College is the largest state school in Queensland, with 2,800 students from Preschool through to Year 12.  Despite having a large kitchen facility, the issues faced by North Lakes will be familiar to tuckshop managers from schools of all sizes.  Cindy, the tuckshop manager explains, “The biggest challenge is the time it took to collate the brown bags and process the sales through the cash register. Fridays are our busiest day for orders and we had two staff members tied up for over two hours counting money”.

Cindy took over the role of tuckshop manager this year and proceeded to implement some significant changes to the menu.  However, parents were continuing to order from the old menu, which created significant work for her staff, “it took a lot of time to phone up classes and get the orders changed”, says Cindy.

In Term 2 2009, North Lakes engaged FlexiSchools to install the online ordering system.  Within weeks, hundreds of students and parents had registered for the service and began ordering online.  “It has streamlined the system and saved a lot of time”, says Cindy.  FlexiSchools has also reduced the number of issues the tuckshop staff has to deal with each day. “One of the biggest advantages is having a record of all orders placed so we can deal with queries and give definitive answers. Often we have students who claim they handed in a bag order and we have no record of that but with FlexiSchools we always have a record.”

Cindy is keen to get as many orders online as possible. “We have made all Fridays ‘On-line Order Only’ and this has helped. We have also set up a dedicated PC in the cafe for parents to use to place orders and I also use it to train parents. All parents who have signed up now claim it is the best thing we ever did!”

Cindy’s advice to schools looking at FlexiSchools is “Don't hesitate - it really is the best system out there. I have been very impressed with customer service and all my queries and changes get sorted out instantly. It saves us time and lets me put my paid staff to much better use than counting endless bags which in turn makes us a better, more streamlined café”.

Read Another Story