Best Food and Beverage Initiative
Food and beverage operations are the powerhouses of many campus service organisations, providing the sorts of gathering spaces and nourishing offers integral to hungry campus communities! Members must continually adapt, evolve, and challenge the norms of these operations to accommodate the ever-changing environment and meet the ongoing needs of their students and customers.
An excellent Food and Beverage Initiative recognises the opportunities presented to adapt and evolve any offer or outlet outlets and responds accordingly. It will be creative and collaborative, provide access to appropriate forms of sustenance, and be engaging and supportive of its campus activities, customers, and communities.
This award celebrates excellence in Food & Beverage initiatives being delivered by a member organisation in 2022/23.
Initiatives can include but are not limited to: student support packages, product awareness or development, adaptations to changing consumer needs, maintaining presence and relevance, meeting consumer requests, reinvigorating an outlet offer or offering special deals, and supporting campus community engagement activities.
The Jury will be looking for entries that demonstrate excellence in the following:
- Astute recognition of the need for the initiative
- Good adaptability to the changing market
- Tangible and measurable goals and objectives
- Evidence of strong strategic planning
- Creative techniques used to deliver your desired outcomes
- Effective use of resources (teams, funds, assets)
- Inclusivity, diversity, and environmental considerations
- The quality of the offer
- Campus community or customer engagement and experience factors
- Evidence of success and positive impacts with measurable results
- Innovation, leadership, and recognition* (applies to ‘Best of the Year’ submissions only)
Award Submission Criteria
Submissions need to address each of the following criteria:
- Name of organisation
- Organisation logo
- Name and contact details of the person completing the submission
- Full-Time student load (Total student enrolments)
- Name of Initiative
This category of the SEN Awards has two levels of recognition – ‘Award of Distinction’ and ‘Best of the Year’.
For your submission to be considered for an ‘Award of Distinction’ you will be required to complete the first 3 sets of criteria PLUS provide supporting evidence.
For your submission to be considered for the ‘Best of the Year’ Award you will be required to complete all of the ‘Award of Distinction’ requirements, PLUS the additional Innovation and Leadership criteria.
Tell us the WHY of your initiative.
- What was the reason for the initiative?
- What were you aiming for and why?
- What were the goals and objectives you were hoping to achieve?
Tell us the HOW of your Initiative.
- What key strategies were identified and used to deliver on the goals and objectives of your initiative?
- What creative techniques and effective use of resources were applied? Was there student input and if so in what capacity? Did you engage with any external partnerships and if so, what was their input?
- What communications and marketing did you use to reach your target market and promote your initiative?
- How did you ensure your initiative was inclusive, accessible, and responsible? You can reference details such as equitable access to the initiative, promotion of healthy alternatives or addressing dietary requirements, responsible Supply Chain factors – promotion and/or use of social/fair-trade/local suppliers, use of environmental and sustainable materials/products, waste reduction factors, environmental packaging used, etc
EVIDENCE OF SUCCESS
- What was the outcome of your initiative?
- Which of your goals and objectives did you achieve?
- What was the overall engagement and experience factor of your initiative on students, the campus community, and/or your customers?
- How have you determined its success? What were the tangible and measurable positive impacts for your organisation and students?
This section may be used to support your submission by providing evidence of your claims, it is not a substitute or an additional opportunity for answering the criteria in your submission.
The quality of your supporting documents will be measured against the rubric.
Where relevant, examples will include documentation that will add value and validation to your submission including links to:
- Hero photos that capture the success of the initiative
- Before and after comparative data (quantitative & qualitative)
- Initiative website or feature page
- Initiative social media campaigns
- Initiative video files
- Initiative PR or media
- Storyboards
- Feedback forms
- Written articles
- Evidence of innovation, leadership, and formal recognition (applies to ‘Best of the Year’ submissions only)
You can collate supporting documents into a word doc to minimise the number of your uploads.
To progress your submission for consideration at the ‘Best of the Year’ level, you will be required to complete the following criteria.
- What was innovative about your initiative?
- What stands out about this initiative from other food and beverage initiatives you have offered before?
- What did you incorporate in your initiative that has not been offered or done before on your campus or the sector?
- How was it coordinated or promoted in a completely innovative and different manner from anything offered or done before?
- How does this initiative provide meaningful and significant leadership outcomes for your organisation, your campus community, and within the sector?
- How has this initiative gone over and above in addressing and delivering on an identified need within your organisation?
- How is it positively influencing other organisations in the sector?
- How is the initiative replicable and are you offering support to develop it at other organisations?
- Have you received official recognition for your initiative within your own organisation, within the sector, or broader industry fields?
Please ensure that you have uploaded adequate supporting documentation to support your claims including any reference to formal industry and/or organisation recognition.
Each category has a rubric that will be used as a scoring guide by the Awards Jury Panel against criteria responses in your submission.
Please note:
- Criteria Responses that are a direct copy and paste from previous criteria fields in the same category submission will be marked as Basic.
- Submissions that do not provide supporting evidence of the stated claims will be marked as Basic.
- In the event of multiple applications achieving equal scores, the award decision is at the discretion of the Awards Jury Panel.
- In order to be eligible to win ‘Best of the Year’, your application will need to achieve a score of at least 13 out of 15.
- Applications submitting for ‘Best of the Year’ that do not meet the higher score ranking required to win can also be considered for an ‘Award of Distinction’ at the judge’s discretion.
Category-specific rubrics will be available to download on the submission page of each category.
Click HERE to see an example.