High schoolers have something younger students don’t: off-campus lunch options. Cars, open campuses, and a strip of fast-food restaurants a few minutes away all compete for their lunch. Winning that business means beating off-campus food on the things teenagers actually consider, like taste, speed, and getting to eat with their friends, while still meeting every nutrition standard. Here is how to build a high school lunch menu that keeps students on campus by choice.
Know What You’re Competing With
Older students make lunch decisions like customers. They weigh convenience, taste, price, and the social experience of eating where they want. Off-campus food usually wins on perception alone. Your program can win on quality, cost, and the simple fact that students never have to leave if the menu earns their choice. Plus, eating at school means more time to enjoy their food and time with their friends before going back to class.
Tactics That Win Over Older Students
- Cook the community’s food. Test recipes adapted from your own staff’s and families’ home cooking. Pulling in the cuisines favored in your buildings gives students food that tastes like home and signals that the cafeteria belongs to them.
- Show off where students already gather. Hold a tasting at a school festival, back-to-school orientation, or even a sporting event (the places students and families turn up anyway) and let your team demonstrate what the program can really cook. A delicious new street taco could be what pulls an undecided junior back into the cafeteria line.
- Expand à la carte and food that travels. Add grab-and-go items and dishes students can carry and eat with friends outside the cafeteria. Meeting students where they want to be, whether that’s the courtyard, the commons, or the bleachers, competes directly with the convenience of leaving campus.
Keep the Menu Fresh Without Losing Compliance
A high school menu that keeps students on campus is one that’s refreshed often enough to stay interesting. LINQ School Nutrition helps a team rotate new items and à la carte options in and out while keeping the menu compliant, so the program can move at the speed teenage tastes demand.
The Fast Payments Advantage
Speedy checkout means shorter lines when your menu starts attracting more high school students back to the cafeteria. That’s where a digital payment system integrated with your nutrition software is a game changer. If a student forgets their account number, it’s easy to look up with a system like LINQ Connect. Our one-stop shop for digital payments als makes adding payment terminals for debit and credit cards easy. And with a single app for managing meal accounts, viewing menus, and accessing meal applications, you get more ways than ever to help high school students choose school lunch.
Get the playbook for winning the high school lunch line
This webinar dives into proven ways to plan menus kids love and offer irresistable grab-and-go options (like coffee carts!) to beat the off-campus options.