Food Service

"Sorry, Billy. There's still no money in your lunch account. All I can give you is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich again." It's not children's responsibility to keep lunch accounts current, nor should it be. In most cases, parents just need a reminder to replenish those accounts.

Reducing negative food service balances saves precious district funds. Increasing the proportion of prepaid lunch accounts speeds up lunch lines. Sending automated reminders for parents to submit their free and reduced applications (to qualify for federally funded lunch programs) on time can be a significant savings of staff time and district resources. In some cases, the most important impact is saving the time it would take staff to print out and distribute lunch balance notices, and then make the unpleasant follow-up collection calls to parents.

SchoolMessenger has been the leader in food service notifications. Making it easier for parents to take responsibility for food service balances and taking this issue out of students' hands is part of our mission. It's why we've developed partnerships - many of them exclusive - with more than 20 point of sale (POS) vendors and have built the most sophisticated tools for data integration with those POS applications.

Results Achieved:

Find revenue by reducing negative balances
Speed up lunch lines with fewer charges and money issues
Free up staff time

"SchoolMessenger has been a life saver. In 16 years, lunch balances have never been this low. In the first month, we eliminated 98% of our outstanding balance. At the end of the first year, we eliminated 100%. Wow!"

Jackie Courtney
Food Services Director
Lakeport Unified School District, CA