Universities and institutions face several mess management challenges, including logistical, administrative, and student satisfaction issues. These challenges come from conventional administrative inefficiencies, inadequate feedback systems, food wastage, and infrastructural inadequacies. This decentralized management mode amplifies these shortcomings and impacts students' campus stay experience.
Let’s explore 5 common mess management issues institutions face and how they impact their mess or cafeteria operations.
The lengthy and unorganized nature of conventional administrative processes creates many difficulties for institution authorities and students alike. While a new student is unaware that the mess admission process follows a lengthy procedure, mess management has to work with the old manual and decentralized methods. These methods create difficulties for managing mess operations effectively and leave room for errors. A streamlined approach can help universities simplify the administrative processes to expedite admission or other recurring processes.
Food waste on a single hotel mess or cafeteria premises reaches more than 100 kg per day. This unchecked waste leads to losses in an institution’s revenue stream that minor adjustments to the mess operations can recover. The root cause of this problem is the lack of accurate information on the headcount for the daily meals. A facility for pre-booking meals a few hours ahead and providing contactless dining can help mess management easily handle student traffic on mess premises and curb food wastage.
Limitations of traditional, manual processes for collecting mess or cafeteria feedback are inefficient and often lead to data not being correctly recorded and utilized. This inefficiency is compounded by the absence of a unified digital platform enabling students to record their feedback. Including a platform for students to voice feedback and opinions to improve the food quality and mess operations can be a meaningful addition.
Like food waste, inventory waste is another glaring concern for mess authorities. Standard practices for managing inventory leave no room for optimizing inventory levels. However, real-time updates can help mess staff effectively stay on top of the current inventory levels, which also helps them overcome the issues with understocking and overstocking. These updates can also help them preemptively schedule inventory replenishments while taking wastage out of the equation.
Serving high student traffic at peak dining hours is a significant concern for the kitchen staff as it creates room for operational inconsistencies. Creating room for meal booking via contactless modes can help curtail student traffic and help kitchen staff better accommodate the dining requirements. It will also help students book their favorite dishes from a dynamic menu that offers updates on the real-time availability of the specific dish while letting the mess staff keep track of all the orders. Additionally, the AI-powered analytics provides insights on student traffic and food consumption trends that mess personnel can leverage to improve their operations.
These challenges are the bottlenecks that hinder institutions from addressing administrative inefficiencies. A capable mess management system can help university administrators mitigate these challenges while enhancing student satisfaction and operational efficiency. Transitioning to digitalized solutions can help universities overcome the limitations of lengthy, manual processes involved in mess management.
SpaceBasic’s mess management software solution is one such platform that can eliminate the inadequacies of a traditional mess management system with meaningful technological upgrades. These upgrades are instrumental in helping well-known universities like Reva University minimize their food wastage on campus by up to 50% and many more.
Wondering how you can replicate the success of Reva University at your institution? Switch to SpaceBasic by scheduling a demo.