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Marketing Strategy—Phase 1 143

Therefore, they could not run any price-reduction offers. However, by piloting a
one-choice menu scheme, many were able to freeze costs in this financially diffi-
cult time.

Nonmonetary
The following nonmonetary costs were identified through the research:

1. Children who are late into the dining hall often miss out on the most popular
menu choices. By switching to a one-choice system, designed in partnership
with the children, every school meal taker was given the same choices; the ro-
tation system also ensured every class group was able to be served first once a
week.
2. Food is poorly prepared, unappetizing, and carelessly presented. This is
sometimes due to time constraints, which were addressed through the one-
choice menu system, allowing cooks to devote enough time to prepare one
high-quality meal. Training for school cooks was going to be delivered at the
local level. However, just before the training was commissioned, the School
Food Trust launched a national scheme to offer training for school cooks. To
avoid duplication of resources, the steering group agreed to ensure all local
cooks benefited from this existing scheme.
3. One repeated issue for school meal takers is that they have to remain in the
dining hall eating while packed-lunchers can finish quickly and have longer
playtime (or in summer can eat outside). Some schools are running a rota-
tion system so that school meal takers can eat outside on special tables during
sunny weather.

Place

Through this project, it has become clear that children should not be consid-
ered as passive recipients of a service. They are consumers and make choices
based on their own experiences and judgment. Therefore, they cannot be ex-
pected to eat unappealing food in an unattractive environment. Many suc-
cessful and creative approaches are already under way to encourage school
meal uptake by improving the dining hall experience. The implementation of
lunchtime rotations makes the dining hall a more relaxed, less noisy and
bustling place so that it is more appealing. Children are able to sit outside in
sunny weather and mix with packed-lunch friends. The training intervention
developed for dinner nannies was delivered at the individual schools, because
most of the dinner nannies did not have access to a car and were too scared to
attend training delivered at a college.