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136 CHAPTER 6 ■ Increasing School Meal Uptake in a Deprived Region in England

interviews and focus groups with parents and children were also conducted.
These interviews were used to identify the barriers, guide the design of interven-
tions, and prioritize target audiences.

Primary Audience: Head Teachers

Head teachers are the essential cog in a school and, as such, are the people
who need to be engaged in order to unlock the other stakeholders. By en-
couraging a whole school approach on school food—packed-lunch policies;
direct involvement in the dining hall ambience, layout, and structure; and
better communication with caterers and parents—school meal uptake will
increase.

Secondary Audience: Parents

Parents are also a vital customer. In key stage 2 they still control the choice, in
the vast majority of cases, and their misconceptions over choice, value, and en-
vironment of school meals and the dining hall has direct bearing on uptake.

Secondary Audience: Children

Children at key stage 2 increasingly influence their parents and can impart mis-
information from the type of food offered to their desires to eat what they
choose, which means that they can “bribe” or influence parents.
Due to financial limitations, the marketing strategy was broken down into
two phases. During phase 1, the target audience was head teachers because they
were identified as the key influencer by all stakeholders and in all of the research.
Phase 2 will focus on children and parents (due to start in 2010, subject to fi-
nancial support). Further segmentation work was done with teachers, based on
the findings from the qualitative research. Four main customer groups were
identified for head teachers. These were:
• Too busy.
• Disengaged and confused.
• Trying within their field.
• Engaged and passionate.
A typical too busy head teacher will not engage with the school meals
agenda, the caterer will find it difficult to secure a face-to-face meeting, and
he or she will be unlikely to respond to e-mail or written communication.
This head teacher will see little benefit in being hands-on in the school meals
agenda; will have other, “more urgent” priorities to attend to; and commonly