How to use meals day-to-day

This article provides guidance on how to manage daily meals in a school setting based on different meal setup configurations. It outlines three options for handling meal choices: with regular meal choices, without meal choices, and with no attendees. It also explains how to add or edit meal choices through the Lesson Overview and the Daily Summary Page.

This article will explain how to use meals daily. The best way of doing this will depend on how you've set up your meals on your site.

To see which setup your school uses, go to School > Meals > Setup.

• Option 1 - If you have set up meal choices for your students, or have set up Rotating Meal Menus (everything is ticked on the Setup page).
• Option 2 - If you don't use meal choices (everything except the last step is ticked).
• Option 3 - If admins (not teachers) input meal choices each day (everything except the last two steps are ticked).

Want to edit your setup to enable easier meals management? Follow the steps here to complete your setup: Setting Up Meals

Option 1 - Attendees and meal choices

If students have regular meal choices, or parents have chosen the child's meal for them, these choices will populate on this page once attendance is taken. You can add or edit meal choices in two ways.

Managing meals from the Lesson Overview

This option is most useful for teachers - you can see how this works here: Taking the meal register

Using meals from the Meal Daily Summary Page

You can also manage meal choices in the daily summary in the meal section on Arbor. This option is useful for admin and office staff members.

Go to School > Meals > Daily Summary > View registers. Tick the boxes next to the students and click the Bulk action button to select the meal.

Option 2 - Attendees and no meal choices

If students are added only as Attendees to the meal but don't have regular meal choices set up, they'll still appear in the meal register. Their meal choice will be blank and will need adding in - you can add or edit meal choices in two ways.

Managing meals from the Lesson Overview

This option is most useful for teachers - you can see how this works here: Taking the meal register

Using meals from the Meal Daily Summary Page

You can also add meal choices in the daily summary in the meal section on Arbor. This option would be useful for admin and office staff members.

Go to School > Meals > Daily Summary and click the Add Students button. 

Type in the name of the student to add their meal provision. This option could be used if you will be adding a meal choice for one student. 

Alternatively, you can go to School > Meals > Daily Summary > View register.Tick the boxes next to the students and click the Bulk action button to select the meal.

Option 3 - No attendees and no meal choices

If you have not added any attendees to the meals set up, you would not be able to use the Lesson Overview to manage meal choices, as no students will be available to select their meal choices. 

Go to School > Meals > Daily Summary and click the Add Students button. 

Type in the name of the student to add their meal provision. This option could be used if you will be adding a meal choice for one student. 

You would not be able to add meals in bulk from School > Meals > Daily Summary > View registers, as the students will not be listed in the list of students in the meal register.