FoodDays 2024: School Lunches - A Walk in the Park

Pamela and Michael founded FoodDays in 2003. What started as a small project quickly grew into a successful venture. FoodDays has consistently leveraged cutting-edge technology to meet its dual goals of high performance and cost-efficiency. Since its inception in 2003, the platform has evolved from a simple homebrew app to a sophisticated serverless infrastructure. By embracing advancements like cloud computing and native compiled web technologies, FoodDays ensures that parents can place orders anytime without compromising on speed or reliability. The shift to a fully managed, serverless solution has not only enhanced system performance but also reduced costs, allowing FoodDays to offer an accessible and sustainable service for schools and PTOs. DeliveryRank has the opportunity to chat with Michael Thwaite.

How has the FoodDays platform evolved since its inception in 2003 to address the growing needs of PTOs, PTAs, and schools, and what key challenges has it helped overcome?

In 20 years, there has been a shift in both the ambition of the Parent Teacher Associations and schools and, the expectations of the parents. At the beginning, we catered for PTOs looking to help out, to create a fund raiser for the PTO to support the school but as time has passed, the schools themselves have largely taken over the provision of school lunches and, the states themselves have begun to step in to define what’s needed at lunch time. FoodDays has grown through that change and now acts as a trusted source of advice to guide schools through the necessary steps to provide service at a time when busy parents are increasingly more demanding of flexibility in the days of fast-food delivery.

In what ways does FoodDays ensure that the ordering process remains seamless and secure for both parents and vendors, particularly given the platform’s roots in high-speed transaction systems?

As FoodDays has grown, the technology that we employ has risen to meet and now far exceeds the demands of the business process - where once we were single computer servers, today we leverage the massive scale on tap at the leading cloud providers. That only covers capacity though, security is an ever evolving landscape and we have to remain vigilant to new threats every day but, that’s our history and where we excel.

How do you ensure that the menu options provided by vendors meet both the nutritional needs of children and the preferences of parents?

Menu selection is a balancing act that our team spend a great deal of time on. Working within state guidelines, price targets and local vendor preferences, we select and, re-select, items based on parent and school feedback. It’s a constant push-and-pull that never stays the same!

How does FoodDays balance the need for affordable pricing with the requirement for high performance, particularly in managing school lunch programs and vendor relationships?

We were born from a need to fundraise for the local school and we’ve always prided ourselves on being the lowest cost provider, something that has stemmed from our ambitions to stay focused on every detail, to question every decision around cost. To that end, our technology stack has become absurdly cheap, our staff overheads are minimal and our vendor relationships are just that, relationships that last and grow. With that base, we’re able to create solutions that maximize fundraising without compromising performance.

As a majority women-owned company, how does FoodDays incorporate diverse perspectives into its operations and decision-making processes, and what impact has this had on the company’s growth and development?

Whilst we are a majority women-owned company which sets the starting standard, in working closely with our PTOs and Schools we feel that each one becomes a part of our driving engine that determines the future of FoodDays. Every school has a slightly different approach to the lunch program. These differences may be geographic, geo-political or cultural and it is these differing views that drive the evolution of FoodDays. The tail does wag the dog, but that’s OK.

If you would like to find out more about FoodDays, please visit https://www.fooddays.com/