Delivery
Research visits
By term 2, the team felt confident enough that the unit would be feasible and revealed their plans to the students.
"We told them that we were actually going to be making the lunches they had chosen in term 1 and selling them to other St Michael's students. We explained that we needed to learn all we could to make the end product, so that fact actually drove their learning throughout the whole unit."
With the project underway, Jo developed a series of templates to assist the students in their research and reporting throughout every stage of the process, from learning diaries and design development pages through to Gantt charts and construction diagrams. An initial profile template required the students to identify their stakeholders, determine ingredients and give a basic sketch of what the product would look like. This complicated template would then be developed further into an initial design brief.
The classes identified their principal stakeholders (fellow students) and then set about finding out exactly what type of pizza, wrap or sushi these stakeholders would most like to buy. Surveys were created and taken from class to class, and the responses analysed, put into graphs, and used to create the students' first product profiles.
With a tentative product identified, the students realised that further research was necessary to find out the best way to produce it. Appointments were made with local restaurants and food chains to have groups of students visit and see how their products could be made on a large scale. The students were responsible for documenting the process and were equipped with digital cameras and a list of questions for the restaurant staff that were happy to help. "The restaurants were just amazing," says Jo. "They got the kids dressed up in their aprons and gloves and let them make the product in their premises, which we then brought back to school to trial."
Research visits
The next step was to source the ingredients they would use on the day. Further excursions were made to local supermarkets and grocers, with careful comparisons being made of the cost and quality of each ingredient to make the most of their budget. The students found the same favourable response they had received from industry, with many sources offering significant discounts. Jo feels that the students' level of professionalism and enthusiasm contributed immensely in gaining the helpful reception from local businesses.
"If you take a group of students somewhere and they are polite and well prepared you will get a good response," says Jo. "The students had practiced asking key questions politely and had clipboards with what they needed to find out and I think people appreciated that effort. I think most people are drawn to children when they're eager and keen to learn something so they responded very favourably to them."
With research conducted during school hours, homework was assigned to cover another important aspect of manufacture: branding. "For the advertising, students designed their own logos with family input," says Jo. "They came back with their logo or their trade names and we voted on the ones we liked best – 'Angel's Pizzas', 'Wrap Stations' and 'Funky Wasabi'."
With enough research done to confidently promote their product, the students needed an investor. A business plan was pitched to the Post Primary Teachers' Association (PTFA) that included a PowerPoint presentation of the work done up to that point. The PTFA were so impressed they offered to lend the students the $275 projected to cover all costs for the three classes' lunches.
Still more research!
With financial backing secured, the classes now felt they were ready to go back to the design of their meal in finer detail. A design development template was used to organise and manage further research into the final ingredients, packaging and the equipment needed for manufacture. This template was used to create the first mock-up meals, invaluable in finding the little details – and possible problems or faults – that can make all the difference to the success or failure of a mass-produced product.
"The mock-up stage was just experimenting and figuring out how we were actually going to do these things, right down to specifics such as how many bits of pineapple and ham we were going put on and where we should place them," says Jo, "so that whoever had that role in the production line would know exactly what they had to do so that it was a uniform thing for every pizza."
The mock-up stage was crucial in that problems could be identified before they became an issue on production day and it was at this stage that many of the classes' biggest challenges came about.
"When we were making the dough for the mock-ups, we went through a lot of gloves, which was quite an expense, so one child kindly brought some from home. We had made quite a few bases when I realized that those gloves had been cleaning ones and were lemon scented. I couldn't risk that they had tainted the dough so I had to biff them all and start again. That was a wee disaster, but we discussed how it would impact on our profit and how to get around this problem, which was more valuable as a lesson for the students than if it all went perfectly."
Surveying stakeholders
The wraps class also faced a major obstacle at this point, as they found their wraps kept splitting and cracking. Jo saw an opportunity here to test the communication, research, and problem-solving skills of the students by suggesting that students ask the businesses they had visited for advice. One suggested warming each wrap for ten seconds in the microwave, which the students trialled and found to be effective. Another set of mock-ups were then trialled to see whether the kinks had been worked out of the classes initial designs with each class eventually satisfied that they had a workable final design that could be put into production.
"We then had a huge amount of work gearing up to the production line. Our class ended up with two because we had to design the pizzas and the boxes. The box was a good dummy run for students to see what production lines were like and demonstrated that every job was important, because without that one job the whole thing falls down. We sat down and discussed every little step, which we put into a flow chart that the kids could read easily so they knew what to do."
With the final day approaching, the syndicate was excited to find that orders had far exceeded expectations. This created far more work for production but gave the students a sense of pride that their effort and endeavour was being taken seriously. The next step was to make a few final preparations before the big day.
Pitching the business plan
"Once the flow charts were established it was just a matter of checking and running through what everybody's job was going to be, including the health aspects like washing hands, wearing hairnets, as well as making aprons out of supermarket bags. The night before, I remember thinking that everything would be alright because the kids knew exactly what they had to do because we had gone over and over it."
When the big day finally arrived, each student knew their role in the production line well. The line consisted of 17 different tasks with groups of one, two, or four people assigned to each depending on the need. The line started with the first group collecting the prepared bases and handing them to the worktable where they were passed between the seven teams responsible for putting on each separate topping. Toppings complete, the pizzas were then transported by the kitchen go-betweens to the cooks who placed them in the oven six trays at a time. The cooked pizza then went to the 'box people' who put them in the boxes, labelled them and then passed them on to the delivery people, who took them to the correct students.
Pizza production wasn't the only work on the day, however, as the process was carefully documented at every opportunity. "Because I have quite a big class, we didn't need all of them at one time in with the pizzas. So when the students had finished their job on the production line they then cleaned their area and washed their hands before moving to a quiet area next door to fill in their learning diary while the production line was still going. We also had some of the deliverers work as photographers as well so there was some crossing over with the jobs when it worked best."
However, the final day didn't go so smoothly for the wraps class as all their wraps turned out to be mouldy when taken out of their packaging. "We rang the supermarket to see what they could do and they came over with a new lot that turned out to be mouldy as well! Eventually they went back and gave us everything else they had in store and it worked out okay."
