If you’ve been on campus at all this school year, you’ve heard about Yay Lunch!, the new school lunch program. With Sage Dining Services displaced due to the demolition of the cafeteria this summer, the administration was tasked with the unenviable job of finding an all new way to provide food for students. Eventually, the school landed on the food delivery service “Yay Lunch!”. What seemed at the time like a relatively simple logistical change has erupted into an uproar of dialogue from students and faculty alike. How did we get here? How did the administration land on Yay Lunch as our new vendor? How successfully has Yay been implemented, and how is the Saints community responding? Most importantly, what does the future for Yay Lunch look like at our school? Are we switching vendors? Seeking answers, I sat down with Mr. Mallett and Coach Sebastian Hendi, who were both integral parts of the acquisition of a new lunch program this school year.
Sage Dining Services partnered with SSSAS for years, so replacing their impact on our community was always going to be a difficult task, and one that is taken seriously by all involved. On the selection process, Mr Mallet said: “if you look in the food delivery space for schools, there is not a lot of competitors…Yay lunch seems to be a dominant player within the Mid Atlantic region. And there are not a ton of competitors that would offer the same types of service. …we also knew that there were neighboring independent schools that had used their service. So we felt confident in developing a relationship with them.”
Yay Lunch! is a relatively new player in the food service industry, only being founded in 2018, but as Mr. Mallet mentioned, they have already have made a sizable dent in the school lunch service industry. According to Yay Lunch!’s website, they currently are partnered with more than 170 schools across the east coast, with a “ 100% year-over-year increase in Yay Lunch partner schools.” With a company expanding as fast as Yay, there are bound to be some logistical growing pains. This begs the question: what logistical struggles have manifested in the implementation, and how has the school reacted to said struggles?
“We are a bit disappointed in the services provided by Yay lunch!…I would not give it an A plus rating right now.” Mr. Mallet remarked.
Through the first month of school, there have been several reports by students of missing or inaccurate lunches. On the topic of logistical mishaps such as this, Coach Hendi, the Yay Lunch! Coordinator at SSSAS, spoke about his and the Yay lunch team’s commitment to improvement. “There have been days 100% where meals have been missed, and that’s not acceptable, or when the wrong item has been delivered, and that’s not acceptable.”
Mr. Mallet commented on the sentiment that Yay Lunch! has seen a step up in the quality and accuracy of orders after a rough couple of beginning weeks, saying, “They’ve been responsive, and they’ve tried to make some adjustments. And I think if you compare what we’re seeing now, with what we were seeing in the first two weeks of school, I think students will find that when they enter the lunch distribution space, or the gym, the bags are, most of the time they are, they’re filled, they’re labeled, they’re organized by grade, and we’re having a higher success rate in the operations piece… So I think that they’re progressively improving things.”
School provided food has always been a topic of discussion in the Saints community, among both students and faculty, so with a change in vendors of this scale, students and teachers are certain to have opinions about the switch. How has our community reacted and behaved in the wake of the shift to Yay, and is it appropriate? There have obviously been people who have voiced their opinion cordially and respectfully, however, there have been some accounts of people exceeding the limit of what is considered constructive criticism.
“I think that not just the students, unfortunately, some faculty as well are not as grateful as they should be for the experience…The people who are there physically helping you, right, it’s not as much of their fault, you got to show gratitude to them.” Coach Hendi remarked.
This is of course not the majority of interactions between members of the Saints community and Yay staff, but according to Mr. Mallet, a little under half the student body is ordering from Yay week to week. With volume like that, it’s going to be very difficult to ensure all interactions are positive ones. “Those individuals that come every day to help set up… they don’t have control over the operation. So I would hate for people’s dissatisfaction, displeasure to be transferred to those people who are just trying to do their job. This is something above them; This is something in the Operations Department of yay lunch.” Mr. Mallet commented.
Mr. Mallet and Coach Hendi both made it a point of emphasis for Saints to not only to be respectful to all parties involved, but to give criticism to the correct people. The people working in the gym every day have no control over whether or not a shipment is correct, and they deserve to be treated with respect.
Despite the reported improvements in quality of services, there have still been rumblings of a potential second vendor switch. How exactly would this work? Would Yay Lunch remain available or would it be a clean switch? What is the motivating factor behind the switch? Addressing some of these rumors and questions, Mr. Mallet said: “This has been a month now of school. Some things have improved, but I don’t think it’s improved to the point of what we were expecting, I think our expectations of what Yay was going to deliver have still not been met, in my opinion. So I would like to investigate other vendors to see if they could provide if I could say to our families, here’s more choice, you know, for you. And that’s kind of what we’re doing now.”
Offering more choice to students for food will hopefully create a safety net for logistical errors. If something goes wrong, as Mr. Mallet mentioned, having extra choices will ensure a greater likelihood that all students who need food get food. It sounds like the search for alternative vendors is still in the early stages, but a potential change or addition to the lunch program is certainly possible..