WHEELING OUT. Rolling carts have helped San Benito (CA) high school foodservice supervisor Brenda Pinsonnault (r.) add points of service for the county’s burgeoning high school enrollment.

With no real food production equipment, the servery is completely supplied by local vendors. “Our students have expressed a real desire for locally grown, locally produced foods,” says Soster, and Mujo's ties into that. It contracts with a local coffee vendor, which provides a custom Mujo's blend; the croissant sandwiches carry the logo of another local vendor; and a third vendor delivers supplies of four to five sushi lunch options daily.

The kiosk has been so successful in the library location that Bert Askwith, an alumni benefactor, recently specified that his donation be used to establish a similar foodservice outlet at the undergraduate library. (It will, of course, be named Bert's.)

Something about “small” resonates with the climate of the times (especially if it is popular and profitable and meshes with the emphasis on “doing more with less.” )Using small serveries, new programs can be implemented at modest cost with limited risk and start-up time, minimal additional labor, little space and low overhead. And if they don't work out, they can be changed or moved just as easily and quickly as they were implemented.

Delivering on the kiosk promise

The range of what small serveries can deliver, based on interviews with foodservice operators, appears almost limitless. In their many permutations, they can help capture new customers, expand service to new locations, increase the types and quality of services, bring more cash to the bottom line, and raise foodservice's profile with customers and administrators.

New York Presbyterian Hospital (NYP) has been successful with five new grab-and-go concepts, each smaller than 1,000 sq. ft. Like most hospitals, NYP's main cafeterias are all in areas where visitors would have to search them out, according to Sue Sussman, network retail business manager. The serveries in lobby areas create impulse sales from visitors en route to see patients or patients waiting for appointments.

“While some of the kiosks reduce lines in the cafeterias, others are additional business that we would not have otherwise,” says Sussman. “A second advantage is the savings achieved by closing down the larger cafeterias during slower evening hours while still having food options for night employees.”

In Mesa (AZ) Public Schools, portable carts stocked with entrees, snacks, fruit and beverages are wheeled onto each of the six sprawling high school campuses daily. They are in position when the approximately 2,500 students on each campus break at the very same minute for a single 40- to 50-minute lunch period.

Remote POS

CLASS APPEAL. Professional staff and visitors appreciate the high-end selections at a UPMC hospital kiosk.

“They disperse the crowds from the main cafeteria and provide really essential additional points of service,” says Loretta Zullo, director of the district's food and nutrition department. In recent years, improvements in technology have made it possible to install point-of-service software so reimbursable meals can be sold from the carts and new product offerings from manufacturers, such as bagged sliced apples, have expanded the carts' menus.

In Portage, IN, Jan Black, school nutrition specialist, was struggling to provide service at a middle school that was bursting at the seams. Her solution: a portable cart placed in an atrium area adjacent to the cafeteria that in effect “extended the cafeteria by creating another serving line. We also moved in some benches to create something of a picnic area for additional seating.”

At the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), the newest of 10 kiosks operating throughout the system opened in the lobby of Shadyside Hospital in July 2006.