Schools often offer a school provided prepared packed lunch for students who are off-site for a trip.
Top Tip: Whichever method you use, it isn't possible to have parents select whether their child should have the meal while signing up to the trip.
There are two ways of managing Trip lunches, depending on your school's requirements:
- Using your regular lunch meal - All students in a registration form are going on the trip.
- Set up a special Meal for trips - Mixed students are going on the trip, or you have different meal options to your regular in-school menu.
Using your regular lunch Meal
If all of the students in your Registration Form(s) are going on the trip, you can use your existing meals setup to select whether students will have home or school provided packed lunch.
Just make sure you have set up these options as Meal Provisions.
Top Tip: If you charge for the packed lunch provided, make sure you have added the price for the Provision, otherwise set a price of £0.
Regular meal with Rotating meal menus
If your school uses Rotating Meal Menus, parents can select whether they want the school provided packed lunch, or to provide their own.
- They will still see the other usual options to select - you can see more details about how parents can book meals here: Meal Menu choices on the Parent Portal or Parent App
- You may wish to send communications to guardians before hand to remind them of when the trip is so they select the right option: Trip communications
- You can use this report to make sure all students have had the right meal choice selected, and to pass on to your kitchen staff to make the lunches before the trip: Reporting on future meal menu choices in advance
Regular meal with Standard Meals
If you don't use Rotating Meal Menus, it is possible to:
- end student's existing meal choices (if you have these set)
- add a meal choice for the trip day
- set up a new meal choice for after the trip takes place (if you usually have these set)
However, we don't recommend this due to the time this would take to manage. It also would not enable your kitchen staff to see what the meal choices for students are only on that trip day.
As such, it isn't possible to collect meal choices in advance to give to your kitchen staff.
You would need to collect meal choices outside of Arbor, then input them into the usual meal register on the day of the trip.
Setting up a new Trip Meal
You may either have:
- different meals options for trips
- students on the trip from different registration forms, and the rest of the students in the registration form not going on the trip
In these cases, you would need to set up a different Meal for trips. Follow steps 1 to 4 of these instructions to set up a new meal, but for Trips: Setting Up Meals
Add provisions for whether students will have home or school provided packed lunch. Top Tip: If you charge for the packed lunch provided, make sure you have added the price for the Provision, otherwise set a price of £0.
New trip meal with Rotating meal menus
To add students to the meal, go to the Attendees section.
Click into the Students Without Regular meal Patterns tab, and find a student going on the trip.
Click on the student, and select the day and exact dates of the trip, then click Save Changes.
Please note you will need to do this individually for each student going on the trip.
They'll then show as having a Meal Pattern for that date.
Set up a Meal Menu for the trip dates.
Parents will then be able to select through the Parent Portal or Parent App whether the student should have a school or home provided packed lunch.
- They will still see the other meals to select - you can see more details about how parents can book meals here: Meal Menu choices on the Parent Portal or Parent App
- You may wish to send communications to guardians before hand to remind them of when the trip is so they select the right option: Trip communications
- You can use this report to make sure all students have had the right meal choice selected, and to pass on to your kitchen staff to make the lunches before the trip: Reporting on future meal menu choices in advance
Make sure students are marked as absent on the regular meal register so they aren't charged for an in-school meal as well as the trip meal.
Top Tip: Teachers will be able to see both registers linked to their classes.
New trip meal with Standard meals
If you don't use Rotating Meal Menus, it isn't possible to collect meal choices in advance to give to your kitchen staff. You would need to:
- collect meal choices outside of Arbor
- mark the students as absent on the regular meal register so they aren't charged for an in-school meal as well as the trip meal.
- input their actual meal choice into the trip meal register (so they are logged as having the trip lunch with the right price). The best place to add students to the register would be on the day from the Admin area: Add a one off meal for a student if the student is not on the meal register
Comments
Article is closed for comments.