ParentPay
ParentPay is the market leading online payment and communication service for schools and families.
We provide online payments, income management and dinner money administration for schools, local authorities and caterers.
Our school online payment and communication system has:
- helped 9,000 schools save administration, staff time and reduced costs
- enabled over 3 million parents to pay schools quickly and securely
- provided families for over 15 years, a safe and secure way to pay for meals, trips, clubs and more.
ParentPay is the only totally socially inclusive truly cashless school payment system; allowing parents to not only pay online but also with cash at any of 28,000 PayPoint stores across the UK.
Find out more by visiting our website: www.parentpay.com
LACA Partner Q&A with Kerrie Bell, Strategic Account Director, Cypad and BlueRunner (Part of ParentPay Group)
What is your school food unique selling point?
Our USP for the school food sector is data and helping school food caterers to harness it. This allows providers to have oversight of performance and delivery across their entire catering operation, and helps inform data-led decision making across school kitchens, point of sale sites within the school and catering or school back offices.
What new products/services have you launched or are looking to launch in 2024?
BlueRunner’s acquisition into ParentPay Group has relaunched Cashless POS to the market – the leading digital, cloud-based till system designed for secondary school food providers. The portable tablet device and multiple student look up methods increase speed of service and allow for flexible ‘queue busting’ in busy areas of the school.
We have also recently launched a new dashboard for our payment analysis module in Cypad, providing users with a consolidated view reports such as of pre-ordered meals vs meals served, meal numbers broken down by key stage and a comparison of meal numbers vs income to show paid vs free school meals.
What do you do to support the school food service?
Helping you as caterers spend less time managing admin and performing manual processes, and more time planning and cooking nutritious meals for education and corporate facilities. We do this by building centralised cloud-based platforms on tablets and web for school food providers to cover all areas of their meal service, regardless of whether you are a single school with in-house catering, a local authority, a contract caterer or a multi academy trust.
How can LACA and school food operators support your organisation?
By continuing to share their challenges, keeping us abreast of market trends, and including us in their conversations with the education sector.
What is your first memory of school food?
Lovely caring dinner ladies and chocolate crunch with pink custard for dessert!