The Zhenjiang Canteens
For the university’s canteens in Singapore, the way how canteen stores are layout and sold their food are somewhat similar. However, the canteen in Zhenjiang has adopted a different from what I am usually used to.
For example, at the central building, there are 3 levels and most of the canteens are located there. Level 1 and 2 have 2 canteens for each level, while at level 3, there is a restaurant. However, the way how they serve the food at level 1 is different from level 2.
Arrangement of their food
At level 2, the foods were arranged like our usual economical rice stalls. However, at level 1, the food is already placed at the front of the store. Diners would take what they want and pay at the store counter instead of the usual way of ordering food in Singapore. The system that ZJU implemented not only reduce the number of people crowding around the store, but also reduces the time required for each customer required to obtain their food.
Another reason for the shorter time to obtain food is because of the payment system implemented at all of the stores. The speed of the transaction is much faster than the DBS pay lah system which SUTD have on our campus.
There is also an area for the automated tray and dishes returning area where each diner would deposit their sperate their utensils before placing their trays on conveyor belts.
What can we learn from them
I personally think that it would be difficult to implement the same way how food is been prepared for SUTD. SUTD has a smaller population that SUTD has compared to Zhejiang University. We also do not have such a large space to display all their dishes. Moreover, if food is been prepared the same way, I believed there would be a large amount of food wastage. As there would be food that would be more popular compared to others. However, we could try to improve our payment system by observing parts of their system that would work for us.
Special Thanks to those in the Photos
*The Food is cheaper, nicer than most canteen/hawker food
