Point of Sale (P.O.S.) Module

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Problem Statement for

Cafeteria Project:
Finding Patterns of Food Preferences

A Cooperative Project in Statistics and Culinary Arts

The Problem:
The manager of the school cafeteria has come to you and your team for help. The manager needs better information to use in making decisions about what food, and how much of each food, to prepare. This project involves designing and implementing a data collection system that will help culinary arts personnel make reliable decisions about menu planning.

Time line:

Day 1: Discussion of the problem and decision making process
Days 2 and 3: Collect and analyze data.
Days 4 and 5: Construct a statistics-based presentation.

Success Menu Planning:
Successful menu planning requires, among other things, reliable information about student preferences for the various food items. Experience in the Davea cafeteria has shown that food preferences vary by:

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School  (e.g. Pizza puffs are more popular at some schools than others)
Day of the week (e.g. Some days are slow days for some items...maybe because the same items are offered at the students' own schools on a prior day ?)
Other factors?? (e.g., gender? grade in school ? )