Loughborough University

Higher Education clients choose technology leaders

How do you get 15,000 students to use a nutritional information website a total of 65,000 times a week? It takes a serious amount of ingenuity, yet Loughborough University’s Imago Services, the in-house catering services and hospitality department have succeeded in the arduous task.

By correlating the nutritional data with the food coming out of the university kitchens, they are helping students make the right healthy purchasing decisions and by really listening to what the customer wants they now have one of the most innovative systems in the UK.

This unique approach was brought about by collaboration between cashless payment specialists VMC, EPOS integrated systems specialists MCR Systems and Starlogic, and culminated in Loughborough University winning a major industry award earlier in the year.

Their approach to bringing together different sources of information on the campus-based website, and the possibility of its implementation in universities up and down the UK singled out Loughborough who took the “Best Use of Technology” Award at the Cateys 07 awards.

Creating the right environment
Three new brands, Fuel, Taste and Dine were developed to reflect the different but complementary food services offered and since their introductions, food and drink sales have risen by almost 23 per cent.

Imago created the trilogy of food services to offer something for everyone. Fuel is all about food on the move, it’s for customers who need to "fuel up" while out and about, and offers an immediate “grab and go” solution.

Taste on the other hand is all about a café culture, and promotes a relaxed atmosphere to enjoy food and meet friends. It’s about sofas, couches, sports on the TV, and catching up with friends, a chilled out bar area with great food.

Finally, the Dine concept is all about traditional dining in a restaurant setting. Dine food is cooked with clear principles to promote healthy eating and nutritional choice.

With the campus hospitality firmly in place they then turned their focus to technology and how to make the whole operation run smoothly.

You are what you eat
Duncan Cressall Imago’s operations director comments:
“We’re constantly looking for new innovations that will make our operations the best they can possibly be. “

“Our tills needed to be programmed to talk to the cashless payment system, which allows everyone on campus to create a ‘purse’ and load cash onto those cards through the web. In turn these two elements needed to be able to tie in with the back office software reporting system, and each user’s unique on-line pages, which provide nutritional data on each meal, purchased. It all sounds very hi-tech, and there are a lot of different applications, but it means from a catering point we’re incredibly efficient and it really helps people connect with the food they’re eating. “

Loughborough University is the first university in the country to develop the new “interactive” food analysis system that automatically provides customers with online nutritional information about the food they are eating and will allow students to set up their own online food diaries.

Loughborough is synonymous with all things sporty. It has a strong athletic heritage whose alumni include such celebrated names in British athletics as Paula Radcliffe and Lord Sebastian Coe. By providing such a detailed and interactive resource for the health of future athletes this will be critical to the future of UK sport.

Connecting the hospitality tills with cashless function, means an individual’s eating pattern can be monitored to help students maintain their correct healthy diet. MCR’s web based Symphony reporting software is then used to create monthly nutritional data reports for sporting coaches. Moreover, the website also has the ability to highlight an individual’s allergy information thus avoiding any potential disasters.

The benefits of implementing the system have not just been for the student’s health, the electronic point of sale systems, working in tandem with the cashless system has cut down average transaction times from seven seconds to three. Multiply that by 50,000 and it’s an amazing feat, certainly one worthy of winning an award.

Duncan Cressall, operations director at Imago Services continued:
“We are the first university in the UK to have won a Catey and we’re delighted. Working with VMC, MCR Systems and Starlogic has given us a platform for technical excellence in our field. We have major plans for the future, including full identity cards, salary sacrifice for staff, and cashless laundrettes that communicate with student’s mobile phones. The possibilities are endless. “

Barry Archer, managing director of MCR Systems comments:
“Understanding the importance of EPOS, whatever a customer’s requirement is our speciality as we have the knowledge to find the best and most appropriate solutions. “

Points Of Interest

• 3,000 cards issued each year
• 50,000 meals per week
• 65,000 students accessing nutritional information on the web per week
• 40 main suppliers providing nutritional data information on the web per week
• 1,800 ingredients nutritional breakdown including RDA

Solutions Used