This blog post looks at school lunch from various perspectives, showing that it is an important service that goes beyond providing a simple meal to promote health and well-being.
Let’s think about the daily diet. Most people, especially students, will have more than one meal a day. School meals are meals provided as part of an organizational act or as part of a service to support this purpose as an additional service to achieve the original purpose in organizations such as schools, hospitals, industries, social welfare facilities, and the military. Simply put, school meals are services provided to help students focus on their studies, and hospital meals are food provided to help patients recover. The development of school meals in Korea was triggered by the increase in working mothers as industrialization progressed. As the number of housewives who prepared lunch boxes for their children at home gradually decreased, meals were provided as part of a service by organizations, which led to the development of school meals. Let’s take a look at the system that school meals use to make our lives easier.
The most important consideration in school meals is the meaning and role of school meals. School meals aim to promote the nutrition and health of the public. This goal is especially important in school meals. During childhood and adolescence, when physical development is rapid, poor eating habits can be harmful to health. Therefore, school meals play an important role in the formation and correction of proper eating habits. School meals can also be used efficiently and economically. In principle, school meals are more efficient and economical than preparing food at home because they are purchased in bulk. Finally, school meals are provided at child and elderly welfare facilities, contributing to social welfare. They serve to meet the nutritional needs of those who cannot prepare their own meals, while also drawing them out of their isolated spaces into social spaces.
Let’s take a closer look at the types and systems of school lunch services that we actually use. The types of school lunch management are largely divided into direct management and outsourcing. Direct management is a sub-system of the organization (parent) to which the school lunch facility belongs, and everything, including the facility, location, and human resources management, is subject to the regulations and procedures of the parent organization. On the other hand, outsourcing is a form of management in which some or all of the operation and management of school meals is entrusted to a specialized catering company that specializes in school meal management. For example, at Seoul National University, the dormitory cafeteria is managed by LG Our Home and the 220 cafeteria is managed by Samsung Everland. The advantages of directly managed school meals are that they promote a sense of belonging and prioritize quality over profit. However, it has the disadvantages of being inflexible and costly to operate under the control of the parent company. On the other hand, the reasons why certain organizations choose to outsource their meals are due to a lack of funds for facility renovation or a lack of knowledge about meal management at the parent company. Outsourcing meals has the advantages of reducing meal costs and costs, improving outdated facilities and equipment, and conducting employee education and training programs more systematically. However, the biggest problem with outsourced catering is that the command structure is dual. In the case of directly managed catering, the person in charge of catering is usually a nutritionist. However, the nutritionist for outsourced catering is a member of the outsourcing company. Therefore, if there is a conflict of opinion between the parent company and the outsourcing company, the person in charge may be faced with a dilemma.
Now, we have looked at the types of school lunch operations. Finally, let’s take a look at the different systems for producing, distributing, and serving school lunches. There are four main types of school lunch systems. The first is the traditional school lunch system, in which food is produced, distributed, and served in the same place. This is the type of system we are familiar with, and it is mainly used in small-scale school lunches. The second is a central-supply meal system. This is a system in which several regionally adjacent meal centers are combined into a central kitchen, food is produced in large quantities, and then packed into single servings and transported to nearby satellite kitchens to distribute. To put it simply, it is like a franchise. However, this method is not often used in school cafeterias because the time and space for cooking and serving are separated, which can lead to hygiene problems, and there is a risk that the school cafeteria will not be able to provide meals to groups if there is a disruption in the supply. The third method is the cooked-and-stored meal system, in which food is cooked in advance and stored, then reheated and served just before serving. This method is characterized by the separation of food production and consumption in time. The main methods are cook-chill, cook-freeze, and sous-vide. Finally, there is the combined meal system, which is a form that minimizes cooking by purchasing processed and convenience foods that require little pre-processing and requires only storage, assembly, heating, and serving. In-flight meals are meals that use both the cooking-storage meal system and the combined meal system.
To improve the overall understanding of school meals, I have briefly reviewed the concepts. School meal management is a discipline that combines food and nutrition knowledge and management knowledge. The goal of food and nutrition, which is to promote human health and improve quality of life, and the goal of management, which is to effectively achieve corporate goals, should be combined to make school meal management support the achievement of organizational goals through the promotion of human health. There are companies that sometimes view school meals as simply a means of making money. This is an act that undermines the true purpose and significance of school meals. Of course, it is inevitable to generate a certain amount of profit to cover high rents and labor costs, but the essence of school meals should be preserved in the long-term welfare investment.
