Rotating Meal Menus - Frequently Asked Questions

Guardians can edit and see their children's future meal choices until either:

• The deadline your school sets for changing meal choices has passed.
• The meal has taken place if you don't set a deadline.

Once the deadline passes or the meal has taken place, guardians can see but not edit past meal choices.  

The Meal Menus section will show a cross if either:

• You have not yet set up meal menus.
• There isn't an active meal meal menu (for example during a school holiday). In this case, check there will be a menu starting after the holiday. In this case, it will show a cross until the new menu starts.

• You can edit the Menu name if required at any point by clicking on Edit availability.
• The Rotate every field is only editable until you set up your Provisions.

Once the Menu available from date has passed, your menu is active, which means you won't be able to edit the Provisions.

You'll need to edit the availability dates so that the start date is in the future to be able to edit your provisions. More on that in our Rotating Meal Menus - Managing Meal Menus guide.

It is not possible for school staff to delete a Meal Menu once set up. You can either:

• Changing the dates so it becomes a future Meal Menu.
• Remove the dates and don't use it.
• Contact the Arbor Support Team and provide code 1037 if supported by Arbor, or your Support Partner if not supported by Arbor to delete this for you. Please note that if meals have been selected, we will not be able to delete this for you.

It is not possible to have multiple menus within the same Meal that have overlapping dates. If dates overlap with another Meal Menu, an error will be displayed when clicking Save Changes.

When you follow the instructions in this series, Regular Meal Choices option will no longer be there.

If you would like us to remove your Meal Menus to go back to using Meal Choices instead, please contact the Arbor Support Team and provide code 1037 if supported by Arbor, or your Support Partner if not supported by Arbor.

Please see our guidance on this here: Adding a seasonal meal (e.g. Christmas lunch)

The meal choices shown to parents do not skip weeks for holidays. This is because some schools continue to run meals for students during holidays, such as FSM initiatives, trips, clubs or childcare.

For example, if you have a 3-week rotating meal menu:

• This week is week A
• Next week is half term; however, the help-term week will still be week B
• The week after the holiday will be week C

Should you wish to restart your rotating meal menu on a certain week (such as week B), you would need to:

1. End your meal menu at the end of the week before the holiday
2. Set up a new meal menu to start on the first day back after the holiday

This concludes our series on Rotating Meal Menus Setup and Management. Check out the other guides in the series by clicking the link to help you set up and manage Meal Menus from start to finish.

How do parents change Meal Choices after they have booked them on the Portal or App?

Guardians can only change their meal choice if the current meal choice is No Choice Selected. 

If guardians already have a meal choice set and attempt to change this, they see a There was problem message on the App and a red You cannot add a meal choice for [the date], because one already exists. Please remove the existing meal choice first error message on the Portal.

So, advise guardians to follow these steps on the Portal or App to select a new meal choice in the Portal or App:

• Click on the day you want to change to open the edit screen.
• Update the meal choice to No Choice Selected using the dropdown
• Click the green Process button to delete the choice

This will have reverted the day they selected to No choices selected.

Once they have done this, they can set a new meal choice by:

• Clicking on the day
• Selecting a meal choice using the dropdown
• Clicking Process to confirm your choice.