Blog
Mar
Hot dogs or bust? Anchorage School District tries to build meals that kids will buy — and eat – Anchorage School District, AK
District: More students buying meals at school –Â South-Western City School District, OH
Maine Schools Stepping Up Efforts to Get Kids to Eat Healthy Foods – Lewiston Public Schools, ME
Mar
18 St. Paul schools offer 3 free meals a day to students –Â St. Paul Public Schools, MN
Metro Students Fight Hunger By Packing Food –Â Notre Dame Academy, MN
Richfield High School opens health resource center for children and youth in community – Richfield Public Schools
Mar
PCS Regional Sales Director, Becki Rogers and Operations Director, Tony Diers attended SNA of South Carolina Industry Conference, enjoying a few days in beautiful Charleston. This is a wonderful event that was recently revived, providing industry members and district decision makers quality time to network and share ideas.
Tony and Becki provided a presentation on using technology for alternative serving locations. At PCS we understand the challenges you face in trying to keep your participation numbers up. Kids can’t always get to the cafeteria or have enough time to eat with shortened lunch periods, so you have to be able serve when and where they are.
Throughout the country, PCS provides portable touch screens and tablets for grab-n’-go carts in the hallways, food trucks and vending machines. New from PCS, teachers can now record breakfast meals from their own classroom computer. This is a simple and cost effective way to provide technology to account for breakfast meals in the classroom without having to print paper rosters, checking boxes or data entry.
Talk to your account representative about how to provide FASTrak student breakfast rosters to your teachers on their PC.
Mar
Gabe Aiello, Director of Product and Business Development attended SNIC this year with Regional Sales Director, David Dittlinger. This conference is a great place to get the drift of where things are headed in School Nutrition and take the pulse of industry participants at the same time. Updates regarding regulation and guidance changes, the politics behind it and input from operators is always fascinating and it informs our thinking and planning for the following year.
This year’s conference provided some of the most stimulating presentations by gifted speakers, like futurist, Christian Crews, who provided the audience with the opportunity to envision the future through game playing designed just for school nutrition, conducted at each table. Our takeaway was that PCS should think seriously of applying robotics to School Nutrition, as many of our budding futurists saw cafeterias populated with amazing robots that will cleverly provide solutions to problems we only now have an inkling of.
Generational research expert and millennial, Jason Dorsey opened our eyes to the importance of an understanding of generational differences and how it can be applied to every area of our operations, from decision makers, mostly Baby Boomers and some Gen-X to new employees and Parents of students now in school, mostly Millennials, and so on. For example, we learned that Gen-X’ers love email and that Millennials communicate mostly by text and will only read the subject line of emails, and hate to be interrupted by a phone call. This explains a lot!
The PCS marketing team and department heads collaborated to see the best way to communicate more effectively with our customers based on these findings. We discovered that almost 2/3 of our website traffic is coming from mobile devices. Having anticipated this, we already have a mobile friendly website and are currently developing mobile applications for many of our products.
Mar
Becki Rogers was proud to represent PCS at the recent TASN Industry Seminar held in beautiful Rockwall, TX on January 27-29, 2016.
We enjoy supporting our state SNAs and appreciate the opportunities provided for us to network and get valuable feedback from our customers and friends. These seminars help us to stay up to date on the ever-changing state rules and regulations. At PCS we strive to be more than just your software vendor. We want to be your partner in success, so never hesitate to contact us about getting the most out of your PCS school nutrition technology.
Mar
Jay Turner
Food Service Director
Elwood Community Schools, IN
Jay has worked at Elwood for 16 years and served 3 terms on the ISNA board. He is now a member of the ISNA Bylaws Committee. He is always looking to improve the financial positions of school food service operations when attending the national SNA shows, SNIC, LAC and ANC.
Elwood has been a customer of PCS for 15 years and they love the back of the house applications due to the ease of retrieving needed data and reports for both the state and Administrative Office. They are also using touch screens and are very pleased with the ease of menu updating and student service. With the addition of Mobility this year, the data between the Food Service office and the building level is much more efficient. Right now, PayPAMS is being implemented to improve services for the district’s parents and students.
Jay is proud of the the 16% increase in participation at their Jr/Sr High School after redesigning the cafeteria to include three separate dining options, including the International Café, Pizza and More and Panther Favorites. The international line has been a huge success with students trying new and exciting menu offerings on a daily basis.
“PCS is always there with quick and helpful service. They work closely with our IT Department to work through the challenges within our network. I continue to recommend PCS to other districts throughout Indiana. I especially appreciate the year end reporting and the detailed information that I can retrieve. I continue to learn about the reports that are available with the help and encouragement of my representative. Elwood Community School Corporation is very pleased to be a long time customer of PCS and look forward to a continued relationship as we continue to grow and expand our operations.”
Recent Posts
- School Districts Can Earn Trip to Las Vegas by Improving School Meals, Sharing Best Practices
- PCS CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT: Child Nutrition Center to serve many roles for Ogden students, staff alike
- Free school meals in Minnesota to begin this school year
- Schools districts plead for universal lunch amid budget talks
- Breakfast in the Classroom with OrderNOW by PCS on the PayPAMS Parent Portal
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