St Bede’s Catholic School and Sixth Form College, based in Lanchester, is a secondary school and sixth form of 1400 pupils, with academy status. As a catholic school with a strong emphasis on pupil academic growth, the school wanted to implement a system that improved lunchtime service efficiency and time management for staff and pupils.
Reducing administration time and costs
Before St Bede’s moved to CRB Cunninghams’ cashless catering system, the office and catering manager carried out many administrative tasks that took up valuable time, including counting money and frequent trips to the bank.
In a digitally dominated world, the school’s Director of ICT Services knew it was time to move to a fully streamlined cashless catering and payment system, making St Bede’s one of the first secondary schools to do so.
The flexibility of CRB Cunninghams’ software allowed St Bede’s to begin using iDStore identity management solutions and then upgrade to Fusion Cashless while using iDReaders to act as balance checkers and Password Management points.
With iDStore and seamless SIMS integration, many previous administrative tasks carried out by the office, catering, and IT staff are now automated, with a user-friendly, responsive, and secure interface for all St Bede’s cashless needs.
Fully integrated cashless solution
Fusion combines cashless catering and an online payment system into one solution, offering complete flexibility to schools with customised menus, real-time updates and ‘smart’ reporting, showing catering staff data such as the top 5 best and worst selling items. Fusion’s integrated system gives staff complete control over pupil data while ensuring security and compliance.
St Bede’s pupils can use the Fusion Online pre-order meal app to order their favourite lunch in advance to collect at lunchtime. Removing the need to decide and order meals at the dining point of sale has saved pupils considerable time spent queueing while allowing staff to monitor food trends and reduce food wastage.
St Bede’s Director of ICT Services, Andrew Freeman, found that the Password Management integration with the balance checkers ensured minimal teaching and learning disruptions if students forgot their passwords.
Throughout the schools, pupils are close to iDReaders, which allow them to change their passwords via balance checker devices. This frees up IT staff time spent resetting pupil passwords.
The results
After moving to a cashless catering system, lunchtime at St Bede’s is now an efficient and speedy process for all users. The benefits of implementing a cashless catering system have extended to pupils, staff and parents, from pupils securing their favourite meal and spending less time in queues through meal pre-ordering, parents viewing their child’s cashless balance and spending history through the online payment system, and fewer administration tasks for staff associated with handling cash.
“As a long-standing customer of CRB Cunninghams for over ten years, we have always found training, support and installation to be of a high standard.
“All staff we work with, including sales, project management, and support over the telephone and onsite, are extremely knowledgeable about the products. Timescales have always been adhered to, while training provides sound knowledge to staff using any element of the cashless catering system in their school role.”
– Andrew Freeman
