The Humble Beginning of Online Ordering for School Canteens in Australia:
The School24 Journey
The digital transformation of school canteens in Australia is a story of innovation born from necessity. Traditionally, school canteens operated on a manual system, which for most was known as the "brown paper bag" method. This involved students bringing their lunch orders written on brown paper bags, often with cash enclosed. While this approach was familiar, it was also fraught with challenges—long queues, misplaced orders, and limited menu options due to time constraints. As schools began to seek more efficient ways to manage these operations, a new era of online ordering was on the horizon.
At the heart of this transformation was School24, originally known as SCAMPS, which began as a community project. The initiative was driven by a desire to resolve two pressing issues that many schools faced: food wastage and the dwindling number of canteen volunteers. Back in 2006, our founder, Abder Bloul, while volunteering at the school his children attended, observed firsthand how these challenges impacted the daily operations of the canteen.
Volunteering in the canteen was supposed to be a relaxing morning, where parents could meet for a social gathering while serving kids their lunches. But the reality was far from that. Working on a Friday in the canteen was incredibly stressful. It involved going through each student's brown bag, trying first to decipher kids' handwriting, then meticulously writing down the items and quantities on a piece of paper. This was followed by manual tallying, which more than 50% of the time led to errors. Just this counting exercise alone was stressful and consumed a significant amount of time. Then came the preparation of the food. At the time, healthy eating wasn't really in vogue. Most canteens or tuckshops served pies, fries, and lasagnas—foods that typically came straight out of the freezer. By the end of the shift, everyone was exhausted, but it was still a memorable time. Serving the kids, with their innocent smiles and cheeky attitudes, sometimes brought joy and made volunteering worth doing again.
Motivated by a commitment to the community and a vision for a more sustainable and efficient system, Abder Bloul set out to develop a solution that could address these issues. Working closely with Janet Miller in a humble canteen at a school in the North Shore of Sydney, they began to craft what would become a transformative solution for school canteens across the country.
This vision led to the creation of SCAMPS, which was later rebranded as School24. The platform was designed to streamline the ordering process, allowing parents to pre-order and pay for their children's meals online, reducing the reliance on paper bags and minimizing food waste through more accurate demand forecasting.
Today, School24 continues its journey to deliver what it was designed to do—reduce wastage and help school shops do more with less. By helping schools across the country embrace technology, School24 enhances their services and creates more efficient ordering and booking solutions.
School24 quickly gained traction as more schools recognized its benefits. By alleviating the administrative burden on canteen volunteers and reducing food wastage, the platform not only improved operational efficiency but also encouraged more community involvement by making the volunteering process less daunting.
The success of School24 marked the beginning of a broader digital transformation within Australian schools, setting the stage for further innovations in school operations. Today, School24 continues to lead the way, helping schools across the country embrace technology to enhance their services and create a more efficient, connected educational environment.