Penwortham Priory Academy is a mixed secondary school of 750 students in Preston, Lancashire. Oversubscribed in a competitive catchment area, the school strives to deliver the best for its students every day.
For Strategic Business Development Manager Cheryl Barker, the priority is consistently improving student experiences:
“We are a forward-thinking school, continually evolving and making key strategic decisions to enhance the learning environment for our pupils so they can achieve their very best.”
However, lunchtimes fell short of the school catering team’s mission: to give pupils, staff and visitors a truly great dining experience.
The problem: Slow till service discouraged pupils and drained staff resources
Students facing long wait times
Queuing through lunchtime led to pupils eating late, missing out on extracurricular clubs, and misbehaving in the canteen.
Resource-intensive staffed PoS
Manual tills created service bottlenecks, while cashless software crashes and sync failures caused constant IT interruptions.
Staff burdened by manual work
The school catering, finance, IT, and estates teams were stretched thin, managing numerous manual tasks.
Lack of catering insight
Basic reporting tools couldn’t provide the data needed to improve school meal uptake and reduce food waste.
Accumulating student debt
Pupils often ate in the queue, before transactions were processed, building up lunch debt and creating finance admin work.
Unsustainable catering service
High workloads and inefficient systems made it difficult to maintain a consistent, high-quality in-house catering service.
The answer: Think outside the PoS
The Penwortham Priory team initially sought to switch to a faster till system, trying multiple cashless catering products from different providers. However, the marginally increased speeds of these traditional, till-based systems simply didn’t fulfil the school’s needs.
The school leadership team reached out to CRB Cunninghams in search of a truly innovative solution and a partnership they could trust:
“We knew of other schools using CRB Cunningham’s system with positive feedback. When we saw the new kiosk development, we were immediately drawn in and wanted to know more.”
Keith Bolton, Strategic Estates Development Manager
Cheryl recognised the tremendous opportunity that the Self-Serve Kiosks presented, not just to improve service speed, but to revolutionise mealtimes at Penwortham Priory Academy:
“It was a completely new concept that was innovative, and we believed could transform our catering service. We thrive on looking for solutions that are not the norm, that make us unique and will support us in meeting our team missions.”
Cheryl Barker, Strategic Business Development Manager
A whole new approach to school dining
The first step in making lunchtimes work for students and staff was to flip the school meal service 180°. Moving transactions to the start of the process allows students to order lunch based on live stock levels, quickly collect and enjoy their fresh, hot meals, then make the most of their free time.
The Penwortham Priory team collaborated with CRB Cunninghams to update the school’s two main dining areas, completely replacing the traditional staff-operated tills with six commercial restaurant-inspired Self-Serve Kiosks in the Key Stage 3 ‘Restaurant’ and three in the Key Stage 4 ‘Bistro’.
So, how do students get their lunch?
At lunchtime, students go straight to the Self-Serve Kiosks to place their order:
- They tap their ID card or scan their fingerprint to log in
- Using the touchscreen, they easily view different parts of the menu and select items
- They can check their live Fusion Cashless account balance and selected items on screen
- When they confirm the order, the cashless transaction is processed automatically
- They take their receipt from the kiosk to the serving area
- Students present the receipt to collect their order and enjoy their meal!
The results
Speed: “Like going from dial-up internet to broadband”
With self-service technology, Penwortham Priory has halved serving time, reducing lunch service from half an hour to just fifteen minutes.
Development Manager
Development Manager
Catering Manager Kirsten Billings explained how the dramatically reduced wait times have given students their lunch breaks back:
“Having the kiosks installed throughout the school, we can get the children in and out within fifteen minutes, which is amazing. All the children are fed and they can enjoy the rest of their dinnertime where they choose.”
Increasing access to the range of extracurricular activities on offer was a key priority for the leadership team at Penwortham Priory Academy. By doubling the speed of lunch service, Self-Serve Kiosks have significantly improved students’ ability to participate in lunchtime clubs.
“The new system allows children to order really quickly, get their food, eat their food, and then have time afterwards to do all the activities that we have in school.”
Neil Gee, Assistant Principal
Student experience: “It’s really fun to use. It feels like you’re in a restaurant”
Penwortham Priory students are very enthusiastic about their new Self-Serve Kiosks. In addition to faster service and reduced queues, students love the intuitive design and familiar technology inspired by their favourite high street restaurants.
“They’re similar to the ones that you might get at McDonald’s or Burger King or something like that, it’s the same. It’s easy to use; you get the gist of it really quickly.”
“It’s really fun to use. It feels like you’re in a restaurant; it’s like ordering your food like you do at McDonald’s.”
Additionally, live, integrated stock control ensures that students’ chosen items are available when placing their orders, preventing disappointment, and keeping service running smoothly:
“With the new system, we input how much food we have prepared every day for the different dining areas… Once they’ve sold, they grey out, and the children can no longer order them.”
Kirsten Billings, Catering Manager
“They can choose their food much quicker from the kiosk, rather than waiting to see what’s left when they get to the front of the queue.”
Cheryl Barker, Strategic Business Development Manager
Dining environment: “It’s improved the flow through all the dining rooms”
The new style of meal service has significantly improved Penwortham Priory Academy’s two main dining spaces. By replacing all of the traditional tills with compact, wall-mounted Self-Serve Kiosks, the school has created a more spacious and welcoming environment in which students can enjoy their breaks.
“If we look at our main dining room, we’ve gone from four tills to the equivalent of six. The children can actually order on the machines far faster than an operator can order on the till. So, not only have we increased the amount of tills, we’ve also massively reduced the ordering time, which results in no queues, serving children faster, and getting fresher food.”
Neil Gee, Assistant Principal
“Having the new system in place, it helps flow a lot better; the way the children are coming in, order their food, get their drinks and then get their hot food, and then they can dine wherever they choose to. So it’s just a nicer flow all around school.”
Kirsten Billings, Catering Manager
This calmer environment and more efficient service have naturally influenced students’ behaviour. Both teaching and catering staff have seen a marked improvement, with more positive lunchtime interactions between staff and students:
“Students aren’t standing around waiting… and of course it results in better behaviour, because they’re through faster, and then can go and spend time with their friends instead of standing in a queue for up to thirty minutes.”
Neil Gee, Assistant Principal
School meal uptake & profits: “We’ve seen a big increase in sales and a reduction in wastage”
Interest in the school’s catering offer has grown significantly since switching to Self-Serve Kiosks.
“We have definitely seen higher uptake in food because the children are no longer taking a long time to get through queues, so we’ve got more children coming through in the restaurant and in the Bistro. So, we’ve had to increase food quantities, which is great.”
Kirsten Billings, Catering Manager
Strategic Business Development Manager Cheryl has seen this translate to more sales, less wastage and better profitability, making the in-house school catering service more economically sustainable:
“The initial indication is that we’ve seen a big increase in sales and a reduction in wastage as well, which is a win-win all-around.”
Reversing the order of service, with students completing transactions before collecting their meals, has also resolved the school’s previous issue of students accumulating lunch debt, preventing potential financial losses:
“Because we’ve taken the payment first now, rather than collecting the food, it has completely eradicated any debt building up. And it’s stopped pupils eating food in the queue when they might not have any money on their accounts, so there’s absolutely no debt being built up at all.”
Cheryl Barker, Strategic Business Development Manager
Reduced food waste: “We literally have no leftover food at the end of service”
The catering team have found tremendous benefits in the Fusion Cashless system, which is built into the Self-Serve Kiosks. By analysing purchasing patterns and sales data with Fusion’s advanced back-office tools, they have been able to improve meal planning and stock ordering, almost eliminating food waste in the dining hall:
“The quantity input has helped massively in saving on waste produce, ordering the correct quantities that we need on a daily basis, and we literally have no leftover food at the end of service.”
Kirsten Billings, Catering Manager
Kirsten can now access actionable insights such as the best & worst-selling menu items, broken down by service time, year group, or dining location, through Fusion’s Smart Reports. This insight empowers the catering team to refine menus, to further increase school meal uptake and reduce food waste.
Operational efficiency enables wider school improvement: “The largest benefit has been the re-allocation of resource”
For Cheryl, the highlight of the catering transformation is that the self-service technology has allowed valuable staff resources to be deployed more effectively throughout the school, relieving staff shortages:
“The largest benefit has been the reallocation of resource, certainly with staffing budgets as tight as they are. The need for six till operators has been reduced to 3 staff on drink and snack stations.”
Additionally, catering staff have reported that their workloads are more manageable since the Self-Serve Kiosks were introduced:
“The feedback from the catering team has been really positive; they say it’s much easier to do their role and to serve the pupils in the limited amount of time that they’ve got. They are happy with the system and they wouldn’t go back to using tills now.”
Daily operations outside of the dining areas have also improved, with finance and IT staff better able to focus their efforts on their team goals without the interruptions created by previous cashless catering systems:
“The additional work previously created in debiting pupil accounts has been removed.”
Cheryl Barker, Strategic Business Development Manager
“It’s removed a lot of complaints about previous systems, about the slowness, lack of synchronisation from previous tills. The technology just works… From an IT point of view, we have less and less involvement with the system now.”
Keith Bolton, Strategic Estates Development Manager
The Penwortham Priory team’s advice for other schools: “I would struggle to give a reason why any school wouldn’t use it”
As thought leaders in education, paving the way towards a brighter future for school catering services around the UK, we asked the Penwortham Priory team for their advice to other schools considering the switch to Self-Serve Kiosks. Here is what they said:
Development Manager
Development Manager
Reflecting on the project as a whole, Cheryl summarised the overwhelming success of the new dining service and reiterated the key benefits she sees for Penwortham Priory Academy’s staff and students:
“The benefits that we wanted from using the kiosks have really come to fruition and I think it’s exceeded our expectations. We’ve completely eradicated any debt, we’ve been able to reallocate resources elsewhere, and we’ve seen a better user experience for the pupils, which was one of the main drives: to make lunchtime and breaktime the best that it could be for the pupils. So it’s definitely paid off.
“From the moment we approached CRB Cunninghams with our interest, our sales account manager has been excellent and still keeps in regular contact now we’ve gone live. The project implementation team were excellent; they delivered it on time, to the planned schedule, worked hard to deliver the project to the agreed timescales, and the customer support afterwards has been invaluable, it’s been really, really good.
“I would recommend CRB Cunninghams to other schools.”
Cheryl Barker, Strategic Business Development Manager
