Lunch menu
Publish the lunch menu so families can see it on the portal and the app: dishes per day, week cycles and special menus per tag.
2026-09-13
Before you start
- Only directors can create and manage menus. Educators do not have access.
- A menu is a template with a validity range and a week cycle: you define the dishes for one or more weeks and the system rotates them automatically while the menu is active, so you never enter a dish for a specific date.
- You can create several menus at once. For example, a general menu for everyone and a special menu (puréed, gluten-free…) restricted to a specific tag: each family sees every menu that applies to them.
- A menu is only visible to families once it is published. While it is a draft, only you can see it.
- For families to see menus on the portal and the app, the school must add the Lunch menu section to the portal menu. Check the Navigation menu page if it isn't enabled yet.
Step by step
Open Lunch menu
In the panel, go to Lunch menu in the sidebar. You'll see the list of menus already created, with the name, audience, validity, week cycle and status of each one.
Create a new menu
Click New menu. The menu form will open.
Enter the name and validity
Enter the Menu name (for example, "Autumn menu"). You can add it in more than one language if the school's portal is multilingual.
Choose the From date (required) and, optionally, a To date. Leave it empty for a menu with no end date.
Set the week cycle
In the Cycle field, choose how many different weeks the menu has (from 1 to 8). With a 2-week cycle, for example, you define the dishes for week 1 and week 2, and the system alternates between them while the menu is active.
Choose the audience (optional)
If you don't select any tags, the menu is visible to every family. If you select one or more tags, only families of students with those tags will see it. This is useful, for example, to publish a special menu for students with a specific diet.
Add each day's dishes
Once the menu is saved, you'll see a row of pills with the weekdays (Monday to Friday). Each pill shows how many dishes that day has. Pick a day and the two meals will appear below it, one above the other: Lunch and Snack.
On the meal you want, click Add dish to enter the dish name and, optionally, its course (Starter, Main, Dessert or Other, or else "No course"). You can add more than one dish to the same meal. Click a dish you already created to change its name or course, or to remove it with the bin icon.
If the cycle has more than one week, switch the week tab (Week 1, Week 2...) at the top before picking the day: each cycle week is edited separately.
Publish or save as a draft
In the right-hand side panel, click Publish so families see the menu on the portal and the app, or Save draft if you don't want it visible yet. Once the menu is published, those buttons become Save changes and Unpublish.
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If a day has the same dishes as the rest of the week, fill it in once and click Copy to the rest of the week. The dishes on the other weekdays will be replaced with those of that day.
Duplicating a menu
In the menu list, click the Duplicate icon on a menu's row to create a copy with the same audience, validity, cycle and dishes. The copy's name carries the (copy) suffix, and the panel takes you straight to the new menu's editor. The copy is always created as a draft, so you can adjust it (for example, changing the validity dates for the next term) before publishing it.
Writing the menu in several languages
Both the menu name and each dish can be written in the content languages your school has enabled under My account → Languages. When you open a dish you'll see a field for the main language and for any language that already has text; the Add [language] link opens a new one.
If you'd rather not type everything by hand, the right-hand side panel has the Translate into the centre's languages button. One click queues an AI task that fills in the menu name and every dish in the school languages that are still empty.
Important
The automatic translation never touches text you wrote yourself: it only fills in empty fields. The menu needs text in the main language for the button to become available, and each translation uses part of your plan's AI task allowance.
Downloading the menu as a PDF
The editor's right-hand side panel has a Download PDF button that produces an A4 page with the menu and the school logo, ready to pin on the noticeboard or send to families.
- Choose the Weekly variant (one cycle week) or Monthly (a specific month within the menu's validity range).
- Choose the PDF Language. Only languages in which the menu already has text can be selected; the rest appear disabled with the reason ("no content", or "unavailable" if we have no typeface for that script).
The PDF opens in a new tab.
What to do if...
The PDF won't generate and I get a content warning. If the menu has too many dishes or the names are very long, it doesn't fit on one A4 page. Reduce the number of dishes or shorten the names and try again. If the warning is about the logo, check it under My account → School details: some image formats cannot be embedded in the PDF.
The Monthly variant doesn't appear. You can only ask for a month that falls within the menu's validity range and within the window of months the panel accepts. If the menu's validity is far in the past or the future, only the weekly variant is available: update the From and To dates if you need the monthly PDF.
I published a menu by mistake. Open the menu from the list and click Unpublish. It will go back to draft and stop being visible to families, without losing any data.
I want to delete a menu. Open the menu and click Delete in the record's sidebar. This is permanent and cannot be undone.
I reduced the cycle from 3 to 2 weeks and want to go back to 3. You can extend the cycle at any time: the dishes from week 3 aren't deleted when you reduce the cycle, they just stop showing, and they'll reappear if you set the cycle back to 3 weeks.
Frequently asked questions
Do families see every published menu? Each family sees the published menus with no audience restriction (visible to everyone) plus any menus whose tags match their student's tags.
Can I schedule a menu to publish on a future date? Not directly. The menu is published the moment you click Publish. If you want it to apply from a specific date, use the From date as the start of its validity and publish it whenever you want it to start showing.
What happens if the cycle doesn't line up with the current week? The system automatically works out which cycle week applies based on the From date and the current week, so you don't need to manage it manually.
Can I offer breakfast in addition to lunch and snack? At the moment the editor only lets you add dishes for Lunch and Snack.