St Crispin’s School, located in Wokingham Berkshire, has an intake of over 1,100 students and a sixth-form centre. St Crispin’s focuses heavily on staff-student relationships, with a large student intake and a robust set of morals.
With a great emphasis on attendance, achievement and behaviour, St Crispin’s needed a cashless catering system to make lunchtimes more efficient for its students and staff.
Cucina restaurants
After employing Cucina Restaurants as their new caterers in September 2014, St Crispin’s transitioned to a CRB Cunninghams cashless catering solution, joining many Cucina schools currently using CRBC cashless solutions.
Two main factors influenced the decision to change to a cashless solution: to remove the need for students to bring cash on-site and allow free school meal students to use the restaurant with anonymity, eliminating any free school meal stigma.
Cashless catering solution
St Crispin’s wanted a smooth transition to cashless catering with a tried-and-tested supplier. When asked what influenced the decision process, Debra Briault, St Crispin’s Business Manager, commented,
“From communicating with other schools and previous experiences, we knew a CRB Cunninghams cashless catering system would be the right solution for us.”
Since February 2015, St Crispin’s has been utilising a CRB Cunninghams cashless catering system comprising five sleek touchscreen tills and a handheld scanner.
Across the UK, CRB Cunninghams provides education solutions and has systems installed in over 3,300 schools. Our education solutions have many functionalities to enable schools to run efficient, effective, and nutritious contactless meal services, reducing school cash usage and the associated issues.
Currently utilising the system for cashless elements, specifically restaurant swipe card accounts topped up at the school office, St Crispin’s School highly regards the CRB Cunninghams cashless system for its ease of use and the noticeable increase in the speed of mealtime transactions.
In addition, they reported great success in keeping the free school meal students’ identities hidden and noted the reduced issue of cash on-site. Since installing the new cashless solution, the school meal uptake has noticeably increased, particularly with free school meal students.
The Results
St Crispin’s is keen to expand its system to encompass library management, print management, and electronic registration solutions. Praising the cashless system for its ease of use and speed, the staff at St Crispin’s also found the training and on-site support post-installation tailored to suit each group particularly helpful.
Debra Briault described CRB Cunninghams’ overall service as,
“a tried and tested solution underpinned by a knowledgeable support team who are always willing to help.”
Thanks to the CRB Cunninghams cashless catering solution, Debra was pleased with the enhancements made to lunchtimes at St Crispin’s. She was pleased with the level of support she received from staff and the system’s overall efficiency.
