In addition, the menu offers pizza and burritos. Even if the student tires of these regular items, several specials are offered each day. Students also choose from a selection of fresh fruit and vegetables at every meal. And parents are sent a monthly menu describing each day's choices and their nutritional value. The name-brand packaging and advertising raise the likelihood that students will actually like the meal.
Private vendors recognize that student involvement is vital to customer satisfaction.
In Woonsocket and Providence, groups of students and parents meet monthly with Marriott's food-service directors. Sandra Caron, a senior at Woonsocket High School who is a vegetarian, says that these meetings have allowed her to buy her lunch at school for the first time. After explaining to the food-service director that she and several other students would be willing to buy lunch if vegetarian entr es were more readily available, the company promised to look into it. I suspected they would do what had always happened. But within two weeks, there was a vegetarian item on the menu every day.