Lunch lines got shorter. Here is what changed.

The cafeteria did not get bigger over the summer, and it did not get more staff. What it got was a second register at the far door and a new rule: backpacks stay at the tables.

Cafeteria manager Donna Pruitt said the average wait for a hot lunch fell from eleven minutes last spring to seven this month, timed the same way both times: a stopwatch, a clipboard, and the third Tuesday of the month.

The second register was not new. It had sat unplugged behind the salad bar since 2023, Pruitt said, because nobody on staff had been trained to run it. Two cafeteria workers took the training in August.

The backpack rule came from students. Junior class president Omar Haddad said the student council watched the line for a week and kept count of every tray knocked out of someone’s hands. “Every jam started with a backpack,” Haddad said.

Not everyone is sold. Some students said the line now splits confusingly at the far door, and the cafeteria has taped arrows to the floor while it decides whether to move the menu board.

Four minutes does not sound like much, Pruitt said, until it is the difference between eating and not. “It’s a twenty-five-minute lunch,” Pruitt said. “Do the math.”

The council posted the new door map and the week’s menu at https://northside.example.org/students/dining/lunch-lines-fall-schedule.