What’s your opinion about the school cafeteria?
Imagine with me walking into a crowded cafeteria on a Tuesday at 12:45. It is loud and people are sitting at the tables and windowsills, some standing, others sitting on their heels. You smell the food that is being cooked that day. What would you feel like?
Lately, many of us have been talking about the cafeteria food and asking the following questions: how can our cafeteria improve, and most importantly for all of us, how can they prepare a hot lunch that everyone will enjoy?
I could imagine my dream cafeteria being a cafeteria that serves salads, fresh fruits, a variety of snacks and baked goods every day. But what about your opinion? What does your dream cafeteria look like? What would be important for you in the changes that the cafeteria could make to make it a place you love? Thank you so much to all of you who have already taken the few minutes to fill in my Survey. To all the others, please, take one minute to share your perspective.
Here are some of the ideas that I heard from other students, or, from my research.
1. There are already great things in our cafeteria
We know that people at Passion Foods are doing their best to please as many students as possible. So, there are some changes and improvements to do, yes, but the food quality is a lot better than in most schools around the world. The changes that were suggested so far are about the organization of the cafeteria itself or the menu or a combination of both. Try to put together some good feedback to make our cafeteria a place we love to eat in!
2. Variety of food.
What we hear a lot about the cafeteria is that the food should improve, but also the quantities of food. Sometimes the portions are just too much and sometimes too meager. So the cafeteria should have different quantities of food, but please be aware of others. Another change that can be made is providing several vegan and vegetarian options. We also need a variety of food. For example, on Mondays we should have different types of meatless food, like vegetables and a big salad plate (a variety of salads in the salad bar), not only pasta. There is a cafeteria in the US that has different kind of food , Brazilian, French and many more. Maybe our cafeteria could do the same.
3. Sustainability
I also read in my survey that some students wanted a more sustainable cafeteria. They said that the cafeteria could improve in these two areas: The plastic around the sandwiches should stop because it is useless to pack it like that. Another said that there should be no plastic cutlery.
4. Other problems
Another problem is that the students tend to sit within their groups of friends, leaving free seats in between, but teachers could encourage students to avoid leaving empty seats, so everyone can find one. Another problem is that food should be something that everyone likes or that the cafeteria lady shouldn’t judge kids on how much they eat because the kids don’t like it, even though they mean well, it's not good to have to force yourself to eat something you dislike.
For some problems, I thought of some solutions, but you can give me yours in the survey if you want. Let students or teachers give ideas on what to cook, and they take one idea to cook, or how to arrange the tables in the cafeteria. If it is really necessary, let students borrow classrooms to eat, only if they are careful to be clean and only if every single seat is taken in the cafeteria. For cooking, we could use seasonal food and mostly food from the region. For trips packing the food in reusable material and having a variety of healthy and unhealthy food would be a suggestion.
The cafeteria has already improved a lot. Now we can choose the amount of food we want during lunch. We need to give them credit that the staff now is nice and it is better than before. Passion Food is trying their best to please us. That’s for sure. Like I said their food is better than most of the cafeteria in the world.
